


Early American X-Ray Specs

by aetataureate



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - National Treasure Fusion, American History, F/M, Heist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-12-26 23:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21108935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: “I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence,” Steve said.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psifiend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psifiend/gifts).

> this fic is exactly what it sounds like. Steveolas Cage took hold of my brain and refused to let go until i wrote it. indulge me.

### SOMEWHERE IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

The Sno-Cats roared over the ridge, kicking up a fine powder behind them. In the back seat, Bucky Barnes kept one eye on the GPS display in front of him, the other on the featureless white landscape outside his window. He didn’t like snow. He didn’t even really like landscapes very much, and there was something unnerving about knowing this one housed a long-forgotten secret. The vehicle bounced and jostled, and Bucky watched as their little red icon slowly moved to intercept a stationary green one.

“Stop!” he called, and Rollins brought the Sno-Cat to a sudden, jerking halt on a patch of unblemished white that looked no different from the millions of acres of bullshit surrounding them in all directions. The second vehicle pulled up alongside, and Steve Rogers stepped out from the driver’s seat.

“Are you sure this is it?” he asked, looking out over the landscape through a pair of polarized lenses.

“Uh, no,” Bucky said, glancing up from where he was jabbing at various buttons on the GPS display. “I _think_ this is it, but realistically, how the hell would any of us know.”

“I was under the impression you were our navigator,” called Alexander Pierce, stepping down from the other vehicle. “When I agreed to finance this expedition, I was assuming that position came with privileged knowledge of our location at any given time.”

“I’m more of a technical jack of all trades, Pierce,” Bucky started, but Steve interrupted him.

“This is it,” he said, pulling off his sunglasses dramatically. “I can feel it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky muttered under his breath.

The most annoying thing about spending extended periods of time with Steve Rogers was that even when he was being stupid, he was almost always right. Bucky reflected on his poor luck in knowing him as he chipped ice from the door of a seventy-year-old airplane. The _Valkyrie_’s cabin appeared to be mostly intact. The pilot had probably tried to land her, and almost made it. Almost.

“There’s, like, a fucking dead body in here,” Rollins called from the nose of the plane. For hired muscle, he was extremely averse to any kind of manual labor. Steve scrambled around to the front and pressed his gloved palm against the glass.

“Charlotte Roth,” he murmured. “Women’s Auxiliary Service.”

“What’s that?” Rollins asked.

“The pilot.”

“The dead body? It was a chick?”

“She was a World War II veteran. Disappeared over the Arctic under mysterious circumstances in early 1945.”

“And the subject of the last words of Dr. Abraham Erskine,” Pierce called from where he was messing with the generator. “To his protege, one Steven G. Rogers.”

“_The secret lies with Charlotte_,” Steve replied by rote. “Alexander, I never would have found her without you.”

“Oh, you would have. I’m certain of it,” Pierce cried as the generator kicked on. “You’re a lot of things, Steven, and a visionary is foremost among them.”

“I wouldn’t have. I was flat broke. No money, no resources, no one who believed in me other than Bucky.” Bucky kept chipping away at the ice, deliberately silent on the topic of how strongly he had believed during the period that Steve was crashing on his couch and making elaborate string boards he insisted weren’t treasure maps. “I swear, if you hadn’t reached out when you did, I would’ve had to get a job teaching high school just to pay my library fines.”

“You’re not remotely qualified to teach high school,” Bucky muttered, and kicked the door open.

The whole party piled into the airplane. Methodically, they opened storage containers, checked hatches, and stomped across the floor searching for hidden panels. After a while, Bucky was forced to conclude there was nothing big to be found.

“So where’s the treasure?” Rumlow asked, turning a slow circle in the middle of the cargo bay. He was the center point in a sea of gutted crates full of ancient Springfield cartridges and K-rations, and privately, Bucky was wondering the same thing.

“How much do you think I can get for this?” Rollins called, lofting a vintage 107mm mortar over his head.

“Holy fuck!” Bucky yelled, instincts born of nine years of watching soliders do dumb and imminently dangerous shit immediately switched on and dialed to eleven. “Put that the fuck down. _Gently_! Oh my god, gently, the only thing you can get from that thing is blown up. Pierce, do you specifically filter your Craigslist postings for dangerous idiots, or was that just a fun coincidence?”

“_The secret lies with Charlotte_,” Steve was mumbling like a crazy person. He hadn’t even blinked at Bucky’s sudden and prejudicial use of his command voice. “_The secret lies with Charlotte_. Not the treasure, the secret. Not the _Valkyrie_, Charlotte.” He moved towards the cockpit, carefully avoiding disturbing the remaining crates and crouching down next to the pilot’s body. “Sorry, ma’am,” he murmured, and reached into the pocket of her leather jacket, pulling out a strange-looking, elaborately engraved cube. “Thank you for your service.”

“Oh,” said Pierce. “May I?” Steve handed the cube over.

“Is that a billion-dollar cube?” Bucky asked, eyeing the crates around him and wondering whether they were all liable to explode at any moment, or Rollins just had a talent for picking ‘em. “And if so, can we go?”

“No,” Steve said, “it’s the next clue.”

“It’s a Tesseract,” Pierce explained, turning it over in his hands. “Used for passing secret messages before the advent of modern cryptography. It was already history when Miss Roth brought the plane down. A beautiful example—worth thousands, probably, but of course, I didn’t invest in this expedition for thousands. I also didn’t invest for the sake of another clue, Mr. Rogers.” He turned to Steve and tossed it back. “You promised me the treasure.”

“I _theorized_ to you about the treasure,” Steve said. “And this is a great step! If we head back to New York, I can analyze this and regroup in say, three months—”

“How about this,” Pierce said, and waved his hand casually. Rollins and Rumlow moved in perfect sync, and Bucky found himself staring down the barrels of two weapons. “You have three minutes to come up with something, and if you don’t, then my friends shoot your friend in the head for wasting my time.”

“What the fuck,” said Bucky. He raised his hands slowly, scanning his peripheral vision for anything he could use. Slow coiling panic was probably an appropriate reaction, but then, so was _damn, this shit again_. “First of all, I didn’t even do anything. Second, I never got the version of the packing list that included guns. Steve, did you get that version of the packing list? Steve?” Bucky turned to look at Steve, who had chosen to utilize the brilliant distraction that Bucky was providing to pull out his multitool and carve a large gash across his palm.

“Dude, _gross_,” said Rollins.

“How the _fuck_ is that helping?” Bucky demanded as Steve started slathering his own blood all over the weird cube. “I may be more of a STEM guy, but isn’t the first rule of the humanities to not put your actual blood on the artifacts?”

“I’m giving you thirty extra seconds for that,” Pierce said, impressed. “I’ve always appreciated commitment.”

Steve pulled his notebook from his cargo pocket and tore out a handful of pages, pressing one side of the cube to each. His blood was dripping from his hand onto the floor of the airplane, and Bucky began to get seriously nervous as layers of surprise and surreality insulating him from the situation dissipated. “Five lines in the secret message,” Steve began, like there was no one else on the plane with him. Bucky held his breath and waited to see where his mind ran. “Plus the symbol of the Knights Templar. I’m gonna read them—Bucky, you listening?”

“Intently,” Bucky said. He was distantly aware that his hands were starting to shake, but if Steve needed a sounding board, he could be that.

“It goes: _The key in Silence undetected. The legend writ. Mr. Matlack can’t offend. Fifty-five in iron pen. The stain affected._ Offend, pen rhyme, plus detected, affected—there’s probably an order to it. _Mr. Matlack can’t offend, fifty-five in iron pen_. Short lines together, so— _The legend writ, the stain affected. The key in Silence undetected_. Bucky, is this giving you anything?”

“Um,” Bucky said, trying to free-word associate over the high-pitched sound of his own fear. “Legend, key, I think map.”

“Which fits with the overall treasure hunt theme,” Steve said, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. The bastard could never resist a riddle, even with ninety seconds of sand left in Bucky’s own personal hourglass. “Silence could be—”

“Iron pen. Prison,” Rumlow offered, probably because of all the time he had spent there.

“Maybe, but I didn’t ask you. It is currently my and Bucky’s turn to talk. In eighty-three seconds it can be your turn. From the calligraphy, I’d say late eighteenth century, early nineteenth. Mr. Matlack. _Timothy_ Matlack. Calligrapher of the Declaration of Independence.”

“How many people signed the Declaration of Independence?” Bucky asked, rolling with it. Rollins had a mean fucking look on his face, and he had his finger in the trigger well.

“Fifty-five, including nine Masons. Men of iron resolve. _Oh_,” Steve breathed, and straightened up, turning to Pierce. “There’s a secret map on the back of the Declaration of Independence.”

There was a long pause. Bucky looked around himself to see if everyone else had just heard the same sentence he just heard. Pierce looked thoughtful, but Rollins and Rumlow looked just as dubious as Bucky felt. “Uh,” Rollins offered, lowering his gun slightly. “No there isn’t.”

“It’s brilliant, actually,” Pierce said, looking over the pages Steve had stamped. “A document of that importance would surely be preserved.”

“And the map with it,” Steve grinned. “There you have it. With time to spare.”

“Time to spare,” Pierce echoed. “You know, Steven, that might have been true once. But I’m becoming an old man. And you’re becoming a hindrance.” At that, Rumlow and Rollins both pivoted towards Steve, and Bucky’s blood ran cold. He was acutely aware of every moment that passed, every inch of the cargo bay, and a handful of extraneous details suddenly coalesced into a plan.

“It’s been a pleasure working with you, truly,” Pierce said, folding up the pages and tucking them away in his pocket as Bucky inched slowly into position. “But I’m going to have to arrange a rather complex operation to run private tests on the Declaration, and based on our previous conversations about the value of historical preservation, I suspect you’ll only get in the way.” Rumlow shifted slightly, adjusting his grip on his pistol, and Bucky took his chance. 

“Wait,” he called, seizing the mortar from where Rollins had laid it down. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears as he lifted it overhead. “What do you think would happen if I dropped this?”

Pierce turned. “I think that would be a mistake, son.”

“Me too,” said Bucky. He could hear himself talking too fast, jittery. “I mean, mortars are made to be pretty stable, but this one’s been lying around for what, seventy years? Plus who knows what’s in all these crates—could set off a whole chain reaction.”

“That would kill you and your friend,” Pierce said evenly, but Rollins and Rumlow were both glancing nervously between the mortar and the door of the plane.

“Yeah,” Bucky shrugged, “but so would getting shot. I’m a vindictive fucker, ask anyone—I’d much rather take you with me.”

“You’ll never survive the trip back to civilization,” Pierce said. “Put the bomb down. This could be a mercy, for all you know.”

For a moment, something in Bucky considered it. Then Steve, incapable in all his strength, courage, and downright bull-headedness of not calling a bluff, said: “If we wanted your mercy, we would have asked for it. Go.” Just like that, Pierce, Rollins, and Rumlow backed their way out of the airplane. An imagined constricting pressure in Bucky’s lungs eased, but just in case, he kept the mortar aloft.

“Shame it had to end this way, Steven,” Pierce called, as the engines of both Sno-Cats roared to life. “If you had cared less about being a good man, you could have been a great one.”

“Get lost, fucker!” Bucky yelled back as the vehicles pulled away, ever so gently returning the mortar to its place on the ground. Then, at a regular volume: “For the record though, _Steven_, if you don’t have a plan to get us back I will kill you myself and have your corpse for dinner.”

“You know what, that’s fair,” Steve said. “I’m gonna go think for a minute.”

### WASHINGTON, D.C.

“You flagged down a passing…?”

“Danish dogsled team, yes. With a particularly reflective piece of the fuselage.”

“Hm.” Margaret-call-me-Peggy Carter leaned back in her chair, fingers drumming on her desktop. “It’s a remarkable story, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Barnes. And if accurate, well beyond the purview of the National Archives to handle. Have you considered contacting the FBI?”

“We have contacted the FBI,” Steve said. “They didn’t seem particularly interested in protecting something they don’t believe can possibly be stolen.”

“Neither did the Department of Homeland Security, for the record. But, you know, worth a shot,” Bucky added.

“Well,” Peggy said, “I’m inclined to agree with the FBI. I assure you the security of the Archives is top notch. Beyond that, the only thing I can tell you is that I have personally seen the back of the Declaration of Independence, and rest assured, there is no map.”

Steve sat up straighter in his chair. He heard Bucky sigh off to his left, but he hadn’t come all the way to D.C., been politely escorted from the Hoover Building by security, and wandered around the Archives for twenty minutes trying to find Peggy’s office to _not_ tell her everything. “That’s because it’s invisible,” he said.

“An invisible treasure map,” Peggy said flatly. The corner of her mouth twitched. 

Steve ran his hands through his hair and heaved himself out of her rickety visitors’ chair, circling the office. “Believe it or not, we actually know how it sounds,” he sighed. “But it actually doesn’t matter whether you believe me about the map, because Alexander Pierce does, and he’s coming for it.”

“And we’ll have world-class security prepared for him when and if he does,” Peggy said. “But given your inimical parting of ways, you have very little actionable information to offer the Archives, which means, frankly, there’s not much we can do.”

“Listen,” Bucky said, as Steve continued to pace the room, frustration bubbling up in his chest. “I know better than anyone that Steve has some ideas that are one step short of crazy, I’ve been dealing with them since preschool. But Pierce is bad news for you guys. He’s— I don’t know who the hell he is, actually, I just know he’s rich, well-connected, experienced, but most importantly, legitimately clever. Subtle. We had no idea he was going to turn on us until the moment he did, and believe me, I’m a naturally suspicious person.” 

As Bucky talked, Steve took some deep breaths, surveying Peggy’s knickknacks and the diplomas hanging on the walls. Bucky had previously identified Steve’s tendency to “be difficult” when Pierce was mentioned, and despite his perfectly legitimate feelings on the topics of betrayal and near-murder, he was trying to reign it in a bit.

“Suspicious is one word for it,” Peggy said. A framed letter, unassuming, sat atop one of her overstuffed file cabinets, and Steve moved closer to examine it.

“We’re not Bigfoot hunters,” Bucky said, irritated, “we’re concerned citizens—”

“Is this genuine?” Steve interrupted. The letter began _Dear Julia_, and ended with a familiar swooping signature.

“If by genuine you mean from the pen of Ulysses S. Grant himself, then yes, it’s genuine,” Peggy said. “Now, to my point—”

“Written to Julia Dent? _I am writing from Monterrey_… this is from before they were even married. This is amazing, Peggy, where did you find this?” Steve could recognize from years of experience the conditions under which Bucky would be glaring daggers into his back, but he ignored them. It wasn’t often the offices of government employees housed unexpected and precious things.

“It was a gift,” Peggy demurred. She was really very beautiful—Steve had been avoiding thinking about it, but she was. He liked her blouse. “You know your Grant biography, it seems.”

“I should,” Steve explained, “I was named for him. There aren’t many British historians who focus on the American Civil War.” 

“Oh, I’m long since naturalized. Just as American as either of you. Steve Rogers, named for Ulysses Grant. That’s a new one.”

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Steve said, and felt his face start to redden. It was a stupid name to be as fond of as he was, but here he was, explaining it.

“You know, of course, that the S. didn’t actually stand for anything,” Peggy said. She seemed amused, maybe? Hopefully? Steve glanced at Bucky for help, but he was making a horrified version of his I-will-kill-you face. Steve looked quickly back at Peggy.

“I do,” Steve shrugged, casual-like. “My mother taught middle-school history.”

“Brave woman.”

“She was. She also had a thing for Grant, and she thought that since the S. didn’t stand for anything, it _could_ stand for anything. So, Steven. Could have been Stanley. Or Seamus. Or—” His brain was suddenly devoid of any other names beginning with S. It was awful. Peggy was waiting. Why had he felt the need to list to many.

“My mom taught math at the same middle school, and she just _loved_ how presidential that sounded,” Bucky interrupted loudly. Steve appreciated it.

“Let me guess. Madison? Monroe? Garfield? Surely not Carter,” Peggy offered.

“Oh, no,” Bucky continued, “James Buchanan Barnes, at your service.”

“What terrible judgment,” Peggy said. “Although as Peggy-short-for-Margaret, named for the Iron Lady, I suppose I’m not one to talk.”

“Are you on speaking terms with your parents?” Steve asked, aghast, and Bucky turned all the way around in his chair to give him a look.

“_Steve_,” he said, and turned back to Dr. Carter, who looked nothing short of delighted. “Sorry, Dr. Carter, he never learned how not to say what he was thinking.”

“He seems the type, doesn’t he,” Peggy said, and grinned in a way that made him want to prove her wrong. Or maybe right. 

Steve sat back down in his chair, which squeaked in protest, and willed himself to focus back on the reason he was there. “Dr. Carter, you’re a historian,” he said. “You know how important the physical evidence of our history is, I know you do. A treasure like this, uncovered—it could change our conception of the world we live in.”

“From your perspective, then, why not let Pierce find it?” Peggy asked. “Facts are facts, after all.” She had leaned forward over her desk. Steve had the distinct impression she was testing him.

“Because it matters how it’s found. You know I’m right,” Steve said with conviction. “It matters how it’s found, and when, and by whom, and where it goes and who controls it.”

“History is bloody already,” Peggy offered.

“So why add more? Let me see the Declaration. We can find it together.”

Peggy was quiet for a moment, and Steve knew he didn’t have her. Not quite. In the principle of the thing, maybe, but she had to protect what she knew to be real, not what he thought they could make real. “I genuinely can’t help you, you know. Never in a million years would you get permission to run chemical tests on the Declaration of Independence,” she told him.

Steve nodded, pressing his fingertips together. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I’ll speak with the head of security, but it’s an open question how much more they can do.”

“I understand.”

“Good. I must say, Mr. Rogers, I like you. Based on your introductory email, I didn’t think I’d be impressed.”

“Thank you?” said Steve, immediately mentally recomposing his email signature.

“My schedule is packed full for the foreseeable future, but in two weeks the Archives are hosting a gala for our seventieth anniversary. I, luckily, have a plus one.” Peggy opened her desk drawer, pulling out a ticket—shiny, overlarge, with a photograph of fireworks over the National Mall printed across the face. She laid it on the desk, and Steve stared at it blankly.

“That sounds. Formal,” he tried.

“I was hoping it sounded like something you would be interested in attending with me. You can see for yourself that security has it handled, and more importantly, we can get to know each other better. It may be black tie, but I promise you that archivists know how to have a good time.” She grinned slantwise, lipstick blood red. Bucky elbowed Steve hard in the side.

“Ow—oh! I— yes, I would like that very much. Not the gala, I don’t really like galas, but I would like— well, this gala, I think. Why do you— never mind. I would love to go to the gala with you,” Steve managed, pulling the ticket gingerly across the surface of the desk.

“I’m glad,” Peggy said, over a cough from Bucky that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed laugh. “As for why— well, do you know what one step short of crazy is?”

“Obsessed?” Bucky guessed.

“Passionate,” Peggy corrected, and Steve’s eyes flicked up to meet hers. “I appreciate passion when I see it.”

“Me too,” Steve said, and found himself unwilling to get out of his chair. He wanted to say something more, but before he could retrieve whatever it was from the depths of his brain, Bucky rolled his eyes and seized him by the arm, dragging him out the door of Peggy’s office.

“You were terrible in there,” Bucky said, leading Steve down a couple of hallways and across the Rotunda. “Not the treasure hunt stuff, you have that speech down, but the getting asked out bit. You’re really bad at it, it’s embarrassing. We’ll work on it. Shame she didn’t listen though— I guess there’s always social media next.” Steve’s eye was caught by the document cases lining the room, and he veered off in their direction. “There’s— hey, slow it down, will you. My legs are nowhere near as long as they used to be, at least not proportional to yours. There’s the blogosphere, or whatever, we could— hey,” he said, as Steve came to an abrupt halt in front of the actual real-life Declaration of Independence. 

“I’m three feet away,” Steve said, looking down at the document. It looked fragile under the low lights, calligraphy sprawled out spindly and frail. Something in his heart twisted. “I’m three feet away, and they won’t let me— fuck. God damn it.”

“John Hancock really did go ham on that signature,” Bucky marveled. “Can you imagine if he got like, ink splotches on it?”

“There’s a bit in here I think about all the time,” Steve said. He had the thing memorized, had for years, but he traced along the text as he read aloud. “_But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security_.”

“Where is that bit,” Bucky asked, frowning. “This thing is like, more faded than I’m entirely comfortable with.”

“Look, right there. Right below that, you see? _It is their right, it is their duty_— damn it.” Whatever was twisting in his chest resolved, suddenly and irrevocably, into stone. “God damn it. Motherfucker. I’m gonna steal it.”

“Oh, yeah, I see that. Wait, hm?”

“I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence,” Steve said.

“Of course you fucking are,” Bucky muttered, and began to pull him out the door.

“No, I’m serious,” Steve insisted, tugging at Bucky’s grip on his sleeve.

“I know, that’s why I’m annoyed. Fuck, I’m going to spend so much time in prison. Okay, step one: stop planning crimes in the middle of the National Archives. Step two: start thinking of ways of mitigating the horrifying mountain of evidence of motive we left on the pretty lady’s desk.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky closed his eyes and buried his last fantasies of convincing Steve to pack up and head to a bar. “Welp,” he said, “looks like we’ve got ourselves a heist.”

“Okay,” Bucky said, thumping a pile of blueprints down onto a reading table. The sound echoed through the Library of Congress. “If I thought there was a point in arguing with you, this is the time that I would do that, but there’s not, so I won’t. I’ll just say that when we both end up in prison for life, I’m going to get along with the prison people much better than you will, and as punishment for this bullshit I’m going to pretend not to know you for at least two weeks.”

“If Pierce gets the document,” Steve said intently, “returning it will be nearly as hard as stealing it in the first place. He’ll destroy it or he’ll hide it, and either way it’ll be gone from the American public. Thomas Paine once said—”

“Did I just say ‘I’m not arguing with you about this,’ or did I say ‘let’s argue about this’? Jesus, you’re worse than Becca. Shut up and pay attention.”

Bucky laid out everything he had. There were a number of obstacles between Steve and his newfound yet deeply-held conviction that his sole purpose on this earth was to steal the Declaration of Independence: the guards, the security cameras, the bulletproof glass, the heat sensors, the four-foot-thick concrete steel-plated vault equipped with electronic _and_ biometric access codes, sure; but also the eagle-eyed history buffs, the little families from Iowa, the little kids on their fourth-grade field trips. Bucky’s overall conclusion was that they were almost certainly going to fail, and they were definitely going to prison.

“In conclusion,” Bucky said, “we’re definitely going to prison.” For dramatic effect, he laid before Steve a pre-prepared sheet of paper that read CONCLUSION: PRISON. “Now. What do you have for me.”

“You know,” Steve said, “Thomas Edison tried and failed nearly two thousand times to develop the carbonized cotton-thread filament for the incandescent light bulb.”

“Okay,” said Bucky. Steve was better at making a point than he was at making a concise point.

“When asked about it, he said, ‘I didn't fail, I found out two thousand ways how not to make a light bulb.’ But he only needed to find one way to make it work.”

“Wasn’t Thomas Edison, like, an asshole,” Bucky said.

“Well,” Steve said, “yes, but that’s not super relevant to my point.”

“What is your point? Because if we fail two thousand times at stealing the Declaration of Independence, there is legitimately zero chance we’ll be out on parole in time for that magic two thousand and oneth attempt.”

“My point is,” Steve said, swinging the green-shaded lamp to point at the single book he had open on the table, “the Preservation Room.”

“The Preservation Room,” Bucky said skeptically. “What the hell is that.”

“The Preservation Room is—”

“Shhh, I’m reading it,” Bucky interrupted.

The Preservation Room, it turned out, was where the Declaration of Independence was kept when it was neither on display or in the vault. Repairs and maintenance on both the Declaration and its housing happened there—Steve had stuck Post-its in the book, some archivist’s monograph with photographs helpfully included. Not a fully-formed plan, but enough of an outline that Bucky could see the shape of it. A note on the weak points of the case here, general repair times there. A blank note marking the absence of guards along the two far walls in any of the photos. Bucky, bolstered by the intuition born of having known Steve Rogers for-fucking-ever, could almost see the damn thing unfold.

“When?” he asked, pulling back out the blueprint of the Archives and checking how the Preservation Room fit into the overall floor plan. Steve pulled out a familiar ticket from his jacket pocket and handed it to Bucky.

“Dr. Carter was kind enough to invite me to the gala,” he said mildly. “That many VIPs, I wonder if the guards might have a lot to handle.”

Bucky looked at the ticket. It wasn’t much, but it was an opening. “Pierce isn’t an idiot,” he said, testing Steve’s resolve. “He’ll try then too.”

“You remember capture the flag as a kid?” Steve said.

“‘Course I do. You’d come down the middle screeching like a bat out of hell, I’d sneak around the outside when their defense was distracted. But Alexander Pierce is a hell of a lot stealthier than fourth-grade Steve Rogers, and I still haven’t forgotten that time Tommy Weissman broke my arm.”

“Overall, though. We were really good at capture the flag.”

“Among other things,” Bucky muttered. His elbow still twinged sometimes in memory of Tommy. “It could work.”

“It could.”

Bucky closed his eyes and buried his last fantasies of convincing Steve to pack up and head to a bar. “Welp,” he said, “looks like we’ve got ourselves a heist.”

Steve’s list of pre-heist tasks (written on paper, since Steve was both a fool and a closet Luddite) only had three bullet points labeled JBB. In the normal way of things, though, each of those tasks was secretly fifty-seven smaller, more annoying tasks in a trench coat. “Hack NA security cameras,” for instance, involved the acquisition of electrical blueprints, sewage blueprints, and an obscure technical manual that also needed to be understood. It involved two trips to specialized hardware stores that were not even close by, daily recon, a sketchy kidnapping van, and the calling in of a frankly enormous favor, plus the accumulated knowledge Bucky could bring to bear from four-fifths of a PhD in Information Technology. 

“Did you hack the security cameras yet?” Steve asked every single day for two weeks. 

“Fuck off and leave me alone,” Bucky growled every single day for two weeks. Steve pouted. 

One of the bullet points Steve had labeled SGR was just “get fitted for tux.” Bucky felt pretty justified in being a frustrated-yet-smug motherfucker by the time he finally owned the network. 

“We’re in!” Bucky announced, bursting into their-secret-lair-slash-Steve’s-apartment. 

“Mm,” Steve said. He was bent over the same stack of old documents he had been bent over the day before, and for most of the days before that. He nudged a piece of laminated paper in Bucky’s direction without looking up. “Look what I made.”

Bucky picked it up. It was an extremely shitty copy of a National Archives staff badge. Steve’s picture was pasted sloppily into a box over the name JULIO RAMIREZ. “What the fuck. Did you make this on like, a child’s Xerox machine?”

“I used Photoshop. What the hell is a child’s Xerox machine?”

“Like an Easy-Bake Oven, I don’t know. Steve, no one is going to buy this. Why do you even need this?”

Steve considered the badge. “I dunno, for if I get caught snooping. And I would buy it,” he sniffed. “Hey, do you think Peggy is more interested in the election of 1868 or the election of 1872?” 

“I think it could not physically matter less, as long as she touches whatever you send her and then types in her password.”

“I want her to at least _like_ it,” Steve mooned, and Bucky had to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose in order to stave off the urge to commit murder.

“That’s exclusively your problem, pal,” he said, and went back to his task of building a laser into a handheld video camera. It had to shine with the exact right intensity to heat up the sensors in the Declaration’s case, without damaging a centuries-old priceless object. Steve went back to his task of buying an invisible ink kit at Party City.

Despite the Steve-sized pile of bullshit that prep was, on the day of the heist, the sleepless nights and increased risk of hypertension almost seemed worth how goddamn cool it was to watch begloved workers remove the Declaration of Indepence from display and carry it down to the Preservation Room at Bucky’s silent behest. It was like being an extremely minor god. Bucky would never admit it, but the satisfaction of being able to watch from the safety of his shitty kidnapper van over a finally-hacked security camera was an added bonus.

***

It turned out Peggy really had added Steve to the list for the Gala, which relieved some amount of his residual middle-school-style “maybe she didn’t really _mean_ it” doubt. He walked right in, tuxedo carefully straightened and Bucky’s voice coming in comfortingly clear over his earpiece. Steve was feeling pretty good about himself until he came across Peggy, at which point he nearly swallowed his tongue. She was wearing this dress. Red. It was an entire situation.

“Mr. Rogers,” she said, grinning. Her lipstick matched the dress. “How’s your unfortunately-named friend?”

“Fit as a fiddle,” Steve said, and winced. _Fit as a fiddle_ was not a phrase real people said. “He sends his best wishes.”

“Likewise. I’m glad you took me up on my invitation,” Peggy murmured, and swiped two glasses off the tray of a passing server before Steve had the chance. She handed one to Steve, who took it carefully by the stem. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Steve echoed, and gently clinked his glass against hers before taking an overlarge gulp. His fingers were sweating, and he gripped the glass tightly. He was feeling less and less confident in the tuxedo.

“I got your gift, by the way,” Peggy continued, leaning sideways against one of the high tables in the reception hall. “Normally, of course, I’d send it back immediately, but in this case, well,” and then she grinned, baring her teeth at Steve. “I wanted it.”

Steve felt a thrill shoot up his spine, and thought _oh_. He had opened his mouth in hopes something clever would come out when Bucky’s voice cut in over the earpiece. 

“Dude, as great as she looks, and as big a fan as I am of anyone who can shut you up, change of guard is in seven minutes fifty-two seconds.”

“Excuse me,” Steve said, “bathroom,” and drained his glass in one long sip. He walked off, trying not to dwell on Peggy's lipstick, or her bemused and possibly disappointed expression.

In order to conduct what Bucky called the mad science portion of the evening, Steve locked himself in the single-stall handicapped bathroom, which he felt a little bad about. He placed the glass Peggy had handed him carefully in a Ziplock, alongside the chemicals that Bucky had helpfully labeled THREE DROPS, HALF-VIAL, and JUST GO WILD MOTHERFUCKER. Then he watched as a clear set of fingerprints became visible over the prescribed ninety seconds. 

“Buck, I’ll never say anything mean to you ever again,” Steve breathed. 

“Well, now you’re just insulting my intelligence.”

Thumbprint carefully transferred to the tip of a latex glove, Steve took the stairs to the top floor and scanned himself into the APPROVED PERSONNEL ONLY corridor. MARGARET CARTER flashed onto the touchscreen, then ENTER PASSWORD. Steve shone a UV light across the keypad, and seven letters lit up .

“Did the dumbest part of the plan work?”

“Yeah,” said Steve, “suck it.”

“Wait, really? She picked up your stupid nerd present, got invisible ink on her fingers, and then typed in her password soon enough to transfer enough ink to be visible under UV light, and then no one else’s use of the keypad rubbed the ink away?”

“It wasn’t a stupid nerd present, it was an original Grant campaign button from 1868, and the letters are E, A, S, F, L, C, and N,” he read out. 

“Damn, I thought maybe you would give up and go home at this point.” Bucky started listing possibilities. “Uh, we have ‘selfless cane,’ ‘clanless self,’ ‘salsa can face.’ I’m personally voting ‘fecal fans,’ because that’s the funniest,” he called out. “Is this helping?”

“Nah,” said Steve, feeling an extremely stupid and fond smile cross his face. “I got it.” He punched in SENECAFALLS, and the door clicked open.

“You’re a show-off, pal. Okay, I’ve frozen the feed to the security center, but I got you. Go straight ahead.”

Steve continued on down the corridor until he reached the door to the Preservation Room, re-scanning Peggy’s print and entering her password. The door slid back, and he was inside.

Steve allowed himself a grand total of three seconds to be bowled over by their good work and his proximity to history. Then he got down to it, gently unscrewing the fasteners on the back of the document’s casing. 

Until this point, Steve had maintained an awareness that Pierce could appear without admitting to himself any actual concern. Concerned was a half-step from nervous, and nerves were bound to get him killed, or worse, Bucky thrown in prison forever.

“Fuck,” Bucky called, “I lost the feed. I do not have eyes on you, Steve, no visual contact.” Steve began to feel concerned.

“Odds it’s Pierce versus equipment failure?” he replied, trying to turn his tiny screwdriver as rapidly as possible.

“Uh, like fifty to one.”

“I’m taking the whole thing,” Steve decided, hefting the bulletproof casing from its rack and heading for the door.

“Isn’t that a bit conspicuous? And like, heavy?”

“I do all those bicep curls for a reason,” Steve grunted. “I’ll take the elevator, remove the case there.”

“Oh, good plan,” Bucky said. “I was just going to recommend that in case of emergency you use the elevator.”

“It’s not a _fire_,” Steve said, but the rest of his argument was interrupted by a dull thud and a _whoosh_. He turned. Rollins and Rumlow were at the far end of the corridor, standing below a gaping hole where a ceiling panel used to be. Rollins had a gun pointed at Steve, and they looked at each other in surprise. 

“You missed, idiot,” Rumlow told Rollins, and Steve swung the casing up in front of himself like a shield as Rollins fired three more rounds into its bulletproof face. Then things got tricky.

“Steve?” Bucky said, as Steve backed down the hall towards the elevator, tipping a rickety shelf of office supplies into Rumlow’s path and absorbing two more shots. “That better be the sound of your bull moose body clomping down the stairs to meet me at the van.”

“Almost,” Steve gritted out, pressing the down button on the elevator and ducking into a neighboring alcove to wait. The door slid open just as Rollins tripped over a mail cart Steve sent rolling into his path. Steve dove into the corner of the elevator best sheltered by the wall and jabbed the door close button repeatedly, which didn’t seem to help at all. The doors slid closed at a leisurely pace, then dinged and slid back open again to reveal Rumlow with his hand on the button. 

“Fuck,” said Steve, and put his entire weight behind the Declaration, plowing bodily through Rumlow. He sprinted down the hall, catching Rollins with the corner of it on his way by and vaulting over the toppled shelves. He threw open the door to the stairwell just as the thud of silenced shots began again and flung himself down the stairs, bulletproof glass held aloft to protect his head. It was, in fact, very heavy.

“Sitrep?” Bucky asked tensely.

“Breathing,” Steve grunted, and he heard a sigh of relief. 

“I can work with that. Still can’t see you, tell me where you’re at.”

“Stair 8, Basement A,” Steve read off from a sign by the door on the lowest level. “Hang on.” He shoved the door open as loudly as possible, then slid into the dark space under the stairs. A short, tense wait later, Rollins and Rumlow thundered by and out the door. They had never been the strongest, tactically. “Okay, hit me.”

“You’re going up a level and out the door—it’ll dump you into a maintenance corridor. Turn right and head all the way to the end, there’s an exit, the van will be visible at your two o’clock. No guarantees the hallway will be empty, so walk, don’t run, but someone definitely heard all that so don’t linger. Head straight to me. Got it?”

“Up one, turn right out of the door, walk to the end of the corridor, head straight to the van at two o’clock. Okay, moving.”

“See you in a minute.”

The corridor was blessedly empty, although Steve could hear some kind of commotion in the distance that he assumed was related to him. He walked quickly to the end of the hall and slipped out into the night, breathing deeply. The air smelled like humidity and cigarettes, then faintly of jasmine. At Steve’s two o’clock, Peggy Carter was leaning against a low stone pillar. She was mostly in shadow, but the exterior lights caught the edges of her hair and the cloud of smoke she breathed out. She had noticed him.

“Mr. Rogers,” she said, smiling almost guiltily, and then seemed to realize all at once that he was out of breath, sweating, in a rumpled tuxedo, and also holding a bullet-riddled glass case containing the Declaration of Independence. In the distance, sirens began to blare. Steve and Peggy regarded each other cautiously.

Steve could see the van over her shoulder. Bucky was parked in a bus lane. Peggy casually stubbed out her cigarette against the stone. Steve shifted the Declaration so that he was carrying it under one arm, and Peggy stepped out of her heels.

“Yo, sitrep,” Bucky said over the earpiece. 

“Bucky,” Steve said evenly. “Open the door.” Then he took off running.

“Oh my god, is that the hot archivist?” Bucky asked. Steve juked around Peggy and sprinted for the van. He had the advantage of starting in the right direction, but his dress shoes didn’t have great traction and she almost caught him as he scrambled. While Steve had the upper hand in strength, speed, and overall leg length, Peggy was on fresh legs and not carrying the Declaration of Independence. She was almost definitely going to catch him.

About a hundred yards out, he could see Bucky reach across the vehicle to slide the rear door open, and he put his head down and gutted it out. Steve could feel Peggy at his back as he neared the van. Just as he got there, she hit him with a flying tackle that knocked them both into the back seat.

“Get out of our van!” Bucky shrieked, the sound doubled and twisted by the earpiece. 

“Give me the Declaration!” Peggy shrieked back.

“Just drive!” yelled Steve, punctuated by the sound of the non-bulletproof glass of passenger’s side window shattering into a million pieces. He dragged the door shut, blocking out Rumlow and Rollins, who had emerged from a side door and were shooting while running towards a mobile command center that was disguised as a gyro truck and parked directly across the street.

“Were those gunshots?” Peggy asked. “Where are your guns?”

“You didn’t notice that truck? That’s the most obvious crime truck I’ve ever seen!” Steve called up to Bucky, who was doing something to the ignition that caused the van to make concerning noises. 

“We don’t have guns! There are a lot of food trucks in D.C.! This was extremely not the plan!” yelled Bucky, and he peeled away from the curb.

***

After no small amount of aggressively defensive driving, accompanied by the sounds of an even more aggressive tussle occurring in the back of the van, Bucky was pretty confident that they’d lost any potential tails. He pulled over at a well-lit park in a reasonably good neighborhood and stopped, twisting around to look at Steve and Peggy. They were sitting on the floor of the van wearing matching carsick expressions, and Peggy had at some point in their scuffle obtained the Declaration of Independence. She had an arm eeled around the casing, her limbs bent at improbable angles. 

“Are you guys okay?” Bucky asked.

“Doing great,” said Steve with a sort of grimly determined cheerfulness. “Peggy?”

“Um, sure,” she answered. “Let’s call it that.”

Bucky waited a moment. Nothing. “Well, I’ll be okay, thank you for asking. Dr. Carter, it has been lovely knowing you. We wish you all the best and apologize for any inconvenience,” he offered, and reached back to slide the door open for her.

“What?” Peggy exclaimed. “I’m not leaving!”

“Um,” Bucky said, and turned to Steve, who also looked baffled. “Why not?”

“You’re suggesting I, what, get out of your van with the Declaration of Independence and ask the nearest gas station clerk to phone 911?”

Bucky could already hear the faint sound of sirens in the distance; he doubted she’d even need to borrow a phone. Steve shifted uncomfortably. “Well,” he said, “we weren’t actually planning to let you take the document with you.”

“Well, that’s wholly unacceptable,” Peggy said. “You’ll wreck it.”

“Huh,” said Steve, like he was reevaluating his position in the natural order of the universe. “I promise not to?” 

The look that Peggy cut between Steve’s dumb self and the bullet holes riddling the casing of the Declaration of Independence was more eloquent than words could ever be. Bucky respected it; Steve, apparently, was helpless against it. 

“Okay,” he said. “Here, take the front seat. Let me help you, there’s a trick with the seatbelt.”

“Excuse me,” Bucky interjected, “but we’re not letting her come along on our _crime spree_.”

“I’m thinking of it more as a quest,” Steve said, at the same time Peggy said “_spree?_” 

Bucky stared between them, despairing. “Really? We’re arguing semantics?”

“Peggy seems well-qualified and dedicated,” said Steve, in his most reasonable voice. “We could use someone with her job, someone _good_ at her job, to handle the document. Stop us from making any bone-headed mistakes.” Then he had the audacity to turn and smile his best altar-boy smile at Peggy, who for a split second seemed to forgot she was actively trying to ensnare herself in a reverse hostage situation and smiled back. 

The police sirens were getting alarmingly loud. Bucky knew when he was outmaneuvered. “I watched like seven YouTube videos on document handling, so that’s my time fucking wasted,” he muttered, and turned the key in the ignition.

Bucky navigated them carefully out of the city, the car blessedly silent. Of course, as was always the case around Steve, the silence didn’t last long.

“I looked you up, you know,” said Peggy, staring out the window over the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Bucky was sticking to a cool three miles an hour over the speed limit and sending up muttered prayers to any deity who was still taking his calls at this point.

“Find anything interesting?” Steve asked mildly, since Steve was a bastard and a falsely modest one at that.

“Oh, loads of nonsense about Afghanistan this, Special Forces that,” Peggy continued. “Seemed neither here nor there. But I got to chatting with an old friend of mine, Angie. Perhaps you’ve met?”

“Oh,” Steve said faintly. “You know, the name sounds familiar.” Bucky, who had personally commiserated with Angie about Steve on more than one occasion, readjusted the rearview and tried to catch his eye. Steve was determinedly looking at nothing in particular.

“A lot of Angies out there, I expect. But _this_ Angie in particular used to work in the Department of History at NYU, and she had some _very_ interesting things to say about your exit from the PhD program there.”

Steve was starting to look nervous, and also a little sad, which was how he usually looked when anything related to Dr. Erskine was mentioned. Bucky tried to bring it up only as much as their treasure hunt absolutely required. “My advisor passed. His replacement and I had irreconcilable differences,” he offered.

“Sounds rather like an ugly divorce. Is that the same reason you were given the boot at Columbia? Angie was kind enough to put me in contact with _her_ friend Dottie in the registrar’s office.”

“The department chair was a bully. Academia wasn’t for me.”

“Hm,” Peggy said. “As a woman whose professional ethic has her semi-involuntarily trapped in the back of your van with a priceless document that you stole directly from the Preservation Room, I can’t imagine what might give institutions of higher learning the impression that you don’t play well with others.”

“You look me up too?” Bucky demanded after a moment, breaking the awkward silence that accompanied Steve whenever he was forced to consider his life and his choices. He white-knuckled it past two cops cars that had pulled over an Audifull of sorority sisters in tiny skirts. One of them was visibly holding a red solo cup.

“I’m afraid information about you’s a bit thin on the ground, Mr. Barnes. You’re a bit of a man of mystery—not overly fond of social media, I take it? I did find a record of your fourth-grade spelling bee, however—I believe the word you missed was _microwave_.”

“Fucking typical,” Bucky muttered. His career had been interesting. Not as interesting as Steve’s, because no one’s career had been as interesting as Steve’s, but not _boring_. He focused back on the road, judiciously using his blinker to change lanes even though no one else was on the same stretch of road.

“Your personality and decision-making process aside, though, you really did it,” Peggy continued. “You stole it. It’s almost impressive. And rival thieves shooting at you in the process! It’s astounding to me that you weren’t lying about that. Remind me what his name was? The evil mastermind?”

“Alexander Pierce,” Steve said bitterly. Bucky glanced at him in the mirror again. At this point, it was pretty clear that Pierce wasn’t the bored rich hobbyist with a passion for history that he gave the impression of being. Bucky bet if he dug into his financials, the hedge maze of private equity bullshit would lead to something really nasty in the center. If Steve was about to decide they needed to immediately chase down Pierce and root out whatever shady organization he was part of, Bucky was going to be annoyed as hell. He’d do it, because he always went along when Steve proposed that kind of shit, but they’d be woefully underequipped and probably all die. It would be embarrassing, and tragic, and his mother would cry, but at the moment the easiest thing to focus on was the annoyance factor. The good news was that Steve looked like he was under control. He was at least focused on their current problem, which was how Bucky needed him.

“Alexander Pierce,” Peggy mused. “I had forgotten the name. You know, I told my colleague that if anyone was going to steal the Declaration of Independence, it was you. Can’t decide if that makes me wrong or right.”

There was a horrible moment of silence as Bucky met Steve’s eyes in the mirror. “Well, that isn’t good,” Steve broke in. 

Bucky immediately shunted the panic and distress that those words in Steve’s voice sparked into a closed compartment of his brain. As calmly as he could, he put on his turn signal, directing them to anywhere but Steve’s place as the fruits of his third bullet-pointed task headed down the drain. “My clean room,” he moaned, “my beautiful clean room.”

“Pardon?” Peggy asked.

“If they work with you, your colleague isn’t an idiot,” Steve explained. “The FBI is probably already at our lab.”

“It’s not a lab, it’s just his shitty apartment,” Bucky said, “but I had a sweet setup. Clean room with EDS suits, a particulate air filtration system, the whole nine yards. I was underselling it before, I watched way more than seven YouTube videos—damn thing looked like somewhere the government would keep aliens.”

“I thought we’d have a couple hours, at least,” muttered Steve.

“I doubt we have more than a couple _minutes_,” Bucky sniped.

“Well then,” Peggy said carefully, “you can’t run chemical tests on the document in the back of a moving van. I guess you’ll have to drop us off somewhere safe.”

“Wait,” said Steve. “I know someone who can help.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh good,” said Sam Wilson, standing in his doorway in flannel pajama bottoms and a t-shirt that said _Fly As Hell_ over the Air Force logo. “You brought Bucky.”

“Oh good,” said Sam Wilson, standing in his doorway in flannel pajama bottoms and a t-shirt that said _Fly As Hell_ over the Air Force logo. “You brought Bucky.”

“Nice shirt,” said Bucky. “Your mom buy it for you?”

“Oh, really, you have a problem with my mama now? After last Thanksgiving?”

“_Bucky_,” Steve said, warningly. Then: “Sam. It’s good to see you. I need your help.”

“I kinda figured,” Sam said. “What, no hug first, though? Not going to introduce me to your friend?”

Steve grinned sheepishly and pulled Sam into a bear hug. Sam hugged back, which was on the long list of things that Sam was great at, and Steve felt himself recenter a bit, pulled out briefly from the insanity of the evening. “Sorry, sorry, carried away. Hey man, I missed you, it’s been too long. This is Peggy Carter, she works in the National Archives. Peggy, this is my buddy Sam, he works with the VA.”

“_Worked_ at the National Archives, I suspect there are some personnel changes in the offing. Pleasure,” Peggy said crisply, taking Sam’s hand.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Sam said warmly. “Hey, Steve, you heard from Gabe lately?”

“Getting married!” Steve exclaimed. It was the first wedding out of the close-knit veterans’ group he’d met in grad school, and Steve very much hoped he would still be able to attend, given the givens.

“I’m planning the bachelor party,” Bucky said smugly.

“Shit, I was gonna brag on my groomsman status,” Sam moaned. “You, you’ll get us all killed.”

“Speaking of,” Steve began, sobering up at the thought of them all being in jail for Gabe’s wedding. “Sam, I stole the Declaration of Independence. Can we come in before the helicopters spot us?”

“We stole the Declaration of Independence, _we_ stole,” Bucky muttered.

Sam stared for a long moment. “You incomparable idiots,” he marveled. “Get your asses inside. Peggy, would you like something to drink?”

“Whiskey wouldn’t go amiss, I think,” Peggy suggested, and Sam opened the door wide for them, ushering the group into the living room.

“Please tell me this isn’t about the dumb treasure,” Sam muttered out of the corner of his mouth as Steve passed through the well-kept entryway. Steve appreciated Sam trying to make him look cooler and less obsessive than he actually was, but it was also far too late for that. 

“Peggy knows about the treasure,” he admitted. 

“Actually, it was the very first thing he talked about upon meeting me,” Peggy offered. Sam sighed.

“That’s Steve for you. So now he’s dragged you two into this?”

“Literally,” Peggy quipped. 

“I volunteered,” Bucky mumbled. Steve watched him steal a slice of pizza from the box on Sam’s coffee table while he thought Sam wasn’t looking, which Sam was definitely going to notice.

“Get your hands off my fucking food, man. Okay, I’m going to pour everyone a drink, and you’re all going to sit your asses down and explain your choices.”

“Make mine a double, please,” said Peggy.

Twenty minutes later, Sam was seated in the armchair, both hands pressed over his face in despair. “You couldn’t have picked a career with health insurance?” he moaned.

“My plan at the Archives was really comprehensive,” Peggy mourned. “God, I miss the NHS.”

Sam drew his hands down his face and clasped them together, making the same face he had made the day Steve told him he was going to go straight to the Dean’s office and give him a piece of his mind. “Steve, you know I trust you,” he said. “More importantly, you know I like you. But from where I’m standing, you show up on my doorstep asking me to risk my life and my freedom. I need to know that’s worth it.”

Steve sat up straighter where he was perched on the edge of the TV stand. That was the crux of it, really—as much trouble as he was in, as he had gotten_Bucky_ in, he couldn’t lie to Sam. There was just something in Sam, something that made you so certain he would be delicate with the truth that you couldn’t help but give it to him. Once, on what would have been his mom’s fiftieth, just after Erskine had passed, Steve found himself wandering around New York in the middle of the night. He couldn’t bring himself to answer any of his messages, not even the ones from Bucky, who had offered, like he always did, to help. Steve couldn’t take it. He ended up knocking on the door of the shitty little apartment Sam had lived in at the time, and Sam had opened it. Just like he did today. And he had listened. That was the thing with Sam. His door was always open.

“I can’t promise you we’ll find the treasure,” he said, throat constricting a little. “I wish I could, but I can’t. For all I know, I will— all of us will, if you decide you’re with me— we’ll be just one more chapter in the history of men and women who dedicated themselves to this thing. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. That’s a good outcome for me. I would be _proud_, to be— that’s what Abraham was. Do you remember? He was…” Steve’s hands drew circles in the air, trying to conjure up what Dr. Erskine had been. He turned desperately to Peggy, who was sitting on the couch with an inscrutable expression. “Peggy, he would have loved you. Like a house on fire, the two of you would have— That’s all I can really—”

“The treasure,” Sam said, drawing Steve gently back to his point.

“Right. The treasure, but more importantly, the search for the treasure. Even if it’s just clue after clue, on and on until the country falls into the sea, that’s worth it, to me. Chasing the truth. But whether I find it or I’m just one more in a long line, the one thing I can guarantee you is that as long as I’m alive and free, Pierce will never be the one to get his hands on it.”

Sam had an old-school grandfather clock in his living room, and it ticked loudly. Bucky coughed, glancing nervously at Steve, who shifted his weight. He was seized by a sudden fear, all the more pernicious because of how reasonable it was, that this was going to be a bridge too far for Sam. It was blatantly illegal, dangerous activity, and Sam had a life and a house and a good job. He had worked his ass off for all of it, and here Steve was, asking him to risk it all for no reward but one hell of a story. The asking itself was its own form of greed. “We can leave now, if you want,” he offered, somewhat belatedly. “It’s not for everyone, I get that. We’d appreciate a head start, and you making Peggy’s role seem a little less voluntary, but no hard feelings if you pick up the phone and call the cops the second we’re out the door.”

The clock ticked once, twice, thrice, and Sam broke into a grin. “Naw, man, generous offer, but I’m good. You’re a crazy motherfucker, but you’re forgetting one thing: I’m a crazy motherfucker too.”

Steve felt an answering grin on his own face, a warm feeling spreading through his chest. That was the other thing with Sam. Once he opened the door, he hardly ever shut it. “That’s why I like you.”

“What’s with the long pauses, asshole?” Bucky complained, rubbing his sternum. “Are you trying to give me a nervous condition?”

“Well, gentlemen,” Peggy said, “I never thought I would say this, but it looks like we have some home-brewed chemical tests to run on the Declaration of Independence.”

***

Bucky raided Sam’s cabinets for supplies while Sam shut all the curtains and Steve and Peggy carefully removed the Declaration from its intrepid housing. He also took the opportunity to judge as many of Sam’s choices and belongings as possible.

“Why do you have so many lemons?” he yelled into the living room. “To go with your sour disposition?”

“For my _friends_,” Sam returned. “Which you wouldn’t know about because you only have one.”

“Wow, you’re right, I’m so missing out on being given inedible fruit,” Bucky called, heading for the bathroom.

“I was having a party, dickwad. Which is now presumably cancelled due to your deleterious effect on my social life.”

“Oh, _I’m_ sorry for— is this my hair dryer?” Bucky was seized with rage at the sight of what was _definitely his hair dryer, the bastard_, and his voice pitched up about two octaves. “Did you _move with this from New York_?”

“Guys?” Steve called from the dining room, controlling his voice. “Could you keep it down? Peggy and I are doing something delicate here, and also, the FBI is looking for us.”

“Also, you’re delusional if you think you’re taking a hair dryer to the Declaration of Independence in my presence,” Peggy added.

“I have a heat lamp with my terrarium,” Sam said. Bucky opened his mouth to say something cutting, but closed it again at a look from Peggy.

Peggy and Steve had set up a clean tablecloth on Sam’s dining room table, and Bucky valiantly avoided making fun of the embroidered pattern of little reindeer. They were both wearing white gloves, and the Declaration of Independence was carefully spread out before them, declaration-side down. Peggy had carefully applied a light wash of lemon juice using a Q-tip. In the cheerful glow of Sam’s kitchen, it didn’t look like much.

“Are you sure about this?” Bucky asked.

“Shhh,” Steve replied, and switched on the heat lamp.

When columns of numbers began to fade slowly into existence, Peggy Carter let out a small, shocked sound. Then, louder: “_Oh_.” She turned to Steve, face flushed with something like excitement, and seized his hand. “Steven Grant Rogers, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you aren’t crazy.” She promptly released him, grabbed a pen and a spiral-bound notebook, and began writing furiously.

“Sam, you don’t know the exact temperature of that lamp, do you?” she called out as Bucky attempted to see the document without actually looking at it, as though he might create some sort of quantum disruption with his eyeballs. He gave up and looked over at Steve, who was standing there with two kinds of awe on his face. “And we need photos, in case— in case—”

“I have the instruction manual somewhere, and a nice digital camera,” Sam assured her.

“I can’t believe I left my purse in my office,” Peggy muttered. “I’d pull out my phone and sync everything to the cloud right now.”

“Bad luck,” said Bucky, “mine is back at my place, recording my location and periodically making prerecorded requests of my newly-purchased Amazon Alexa.” It would have been a mildly clever alibi if the rest of their plan hadn’t fallen apart at the slightest gust of wind.

“You thought I was crazy?” Steve asked, and everyone paused. “Even after— I mean, there was gunfire.”

“A shared delusion is still a delusion,” Peggy said carefully. “And crazy may not be the appropriate word in this instance.”

“Why would you invite me to the gala if you thought I was crazy?” Steve asked, sounding genuinely hurt. Peggy hesitated, then looked to Sam and Bucky. Sam and Bucky blinked at her, then turned to each other and held a rapid, silent conversation at the end of which Bucky sighed and turned to Steve.

“Steve, buddy, I say this as someone who has known you since before you knew about washing your socks and is thus immune: you are incredibly hot.”

“You’re built like Hercules and you do this really intense eye contact thing when you first meet people,” Sam chipped in. “It’s like, just on the right side of creepy.”

“Okay?” Steve said, and then “oh,” and turned an uncomfortable-looking shade of pink. Then he just stood there.

“He’s rebooting,” Bucky told Peggy. “We just have to wait out the awkward silence.” Steve immediately slapped a palm against his forehead.

“Fuck me, silence, of course. I almost forgot. It’s gotta be an Ottendorf cipher, right?”

“Humor me,” Sam said before Bucky had to. “What’s an Ottendorf cipher?”

“It’s a code,” Peggy said. “An old-fashioned one. See how the numbers are grouped into sets of three? Each one corresponds to a word or letter in a key. A book, traditionally, it’s also known as a book cipher. The Beale Papers were a famous example—they supposedly gave the location of a treasure buried somewhere in Virginia. It’s a hoax, the papers were published years later by a man named James B. Ward, who— oh, Lord.” She glanced up at Steve, who was starting to look uncontrollably smug. “He used the Declaration of Independence as the key.”

“Typically, the first number represents a page in the key text, the second represents a line on that page, and the third a letter in that line,” Steve explained.

“So how do we find the key text?” Bucky asked. He was pretty certain that without him, Steve’s constitutional inability to live in the now would be his cause of death. “Do you think they’ll have it at Barnes & Noble? Because I don’t think my nerves can take another heist.”

“I already know what it is,” Steve said. “Peggy, do you remember what I told you the Tesseract said?”

“With Mr. Matlack and the fifty-five in iron pen? There was another bit as well, yes? Something rhyming. The legend, the stain, the key, et cetera.”

“_The key in Silence undetected_,” Steve quoted. “What would you think if I told you ‘silence’ was capitalized?”

Peggy processed that. “No way. Not the Silence Dogood letters.”

“Got it in one,” Steve said. His smugness was reaching dangerous levels. Bucky looked over to Sam, who rolled his eyes.

“Wow, amazing,” he said.

“Truly astounding,” Bucky agreed. “We are surely blessed.”

“Aren’t we, though?” Steve said, a paragon of sincerity.

“No, idiot, no one but Peggy knows what those are. Explain it to your co-conspirators or conspire elsewhere,” Sam said, whacking Steve gently upside the head. Bucky snorted.

“Ow, fine, sorry. The Silence Dogood Letters. They were written by sixteen-year-old Benjamin Franklin and sent to the New England Courant under a pseudonym. He claimed to be a widow named Silence Dogood, wrote a bunch of stuff poking fun at life in colonial America. They were wildly popular—his discovery as the author was ultimately the reason he left his apprenticeship in Boston for Philadelphia. This was in, what, 1722?” Steve said, glancing at Peggy, who nodded.

“1722. Great. Please tell me we can check them out from the local library,” Bucky said.

“The originals are in the Benjamin Franklin Museum in Philadelphia,” said Steve. “So no.”

“So we do have to steal more priceless artifacts,” Bucky said, rubbing his chest. There was only so much that relentless complaining could do to stave off actual real panic, but he was sure willing to give it another try. “Great. That’ll go well. I’ll add it to my to-do list.”

Steve looked at him quizzically. “What? We don’t need to steal them, we need to read them.”

“I would suggest archives dot gov,” said Sam, looking down at his phone screen. “Since they seem to have the full text right here. Oh, hey, Peggy’s photo is in the staff directory!”

“They can swap it out for my mugshot later,” Peggy quipped.

“Can we decipher everything here?” Steve asked. “How much time do you think we have?”

Bucky crossed over to the TV and flipped it on. Steve’s terrible driver’s license photo immediately filled the screen. The banner text read DISGRACED HISTORIAN ALLEGEDLY STEALS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. “I’d say not much.”

“Then let’s go hunker down somewhere and figure out our next move. Peggy, are you coming or staying?”

“Are you taking the Declaration?” Peggy asked, briskly yet carefully rolling the document and sliding it into the tube Steve had brought for that purpose.

“I’m sorry, but it has to come with us. There could be more to it.”

“Then I’m coming as well,” she said, and slung the Declaration across her back like a quiver of arrows. Great. The reckless idiots had Bucky surrounded.

“I’m starting to think you might just be crazy also,” Bucky told her.

“Passionate,” corrected Steve, and Peggy grinned at him. They were made for each other; it was disgusting.

“One more thing we gotta address, guys,” Sam said. “The cops are at your place already. They have your notes, they have your personal histories—they’re gonna be here asking me questions any time now.”

“You’re right,” said Steve, “and I’m sorry. There’s room for you in the van if you want it.”

“Hell no,” said Sam. “What I want is for you to tie me to a chair and steal my car.”

### EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA

Bucky, whose face hadn’t hit the news yet and whose fake ID was actually passable, checked them into a Motel 6 while Steve and Peggy hit up the 24-hour Wal-Mart for clothes that didn’t make them look like they had gotten lost on the way home from prom. Bucky had just cracked the cipher and done some preliminary googling when his partners in crime rolled in. Steve had apparently decided on a baseball cap-hoodie-sunglasses at night combination that made him look like a movie star arriving at the airport, and Peggy’s hair, makeup, and practical jeans had much the same effect. Neither was subtle, and they were both giggling.

“Did you guys have fun?” Bucky asked, in a tone meant to communicate that fun was not supposed to have been had.

“Did you know this was Peggy’s first trip to a 24-hour Wal-Mart?” Steve said brightly. “She’s lived here since she was like, fifteen.”

“I’m so glad you were able to gift her that experience,” Bucky said dryly. Peggy snorted.

“I’ll cherish the cultural exposure. I must say, I’m not particularly impressed with the construction of their sports bras, but there was a distinct advantage to being the least oddly-dressed couple in the place.” Bucky subtly checked Steve’s face for a reaction to the mention of women’s bras, but unfortunately, Steve had matured since his crush on Jennifer Condiotte in eleventh grade. Nothing.

“Maybe one day we too will have the confidence to go full camo, Peg,” Steve volleyed back. “You gotta believe in us.”

“Could be useful for going on the lam,” Peggy mused. Bucky stared at Steve.

“You were in the Army, Steven. How much more camo could you possibly fit on your body.”

“Camo Man has reached unplumbed depths,” Peggy explained.

“Where— you know, actually, never mind. There’s a secret message hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence, anyone want to know what it says?” Steve and Peggy both immediately rushed towards Bucky’s spot on the double bed, and Bucky was forced to lean back and lower the screen of his laptop in self-defense. “Hey, whoa, I will verbally tell you, what is wrong with you people?”

“Sorry, sorry, we’re excited,” Steve said, stripping off his cap-glasses-hoodie disguise and tossing it onto the bed. Freed from the confines of the hoodie, the cap was very clearly a Phillies cap.

“What the fuck,” Bucky said, betrayed.

“So they can’t tell it’s me,” Steve explained rationally.

“So they c— Steve, it doesn’t say _Mets fan_ in your BOLO, how could you—”

“We’re _near Philly_, I’m trying to _blend in_—”

“By _compromising your p_—”

“Gentlemen!” Peggy said. “The secret message on the back of the Declaration of Independence?”

Bucky cleared his throat dramatically and adjusted his laptop screen. “_The vision to see  
the treasured past comes as the timely shadow crosses in front of the house of Pass and Stow_.” There was a long moment of silence, and Bucky took a second to revel in it before continuing. “Pass and Stow, of course, referring to—”

“The Liberty Bell,” Steve and Peggy said simultaneously.

“Damn it,” Bucky muttered, and closed out of the Google Search results for _pass stow american history_ before handing his laptop over to Peggy.

“So when John Pass and John Stow cast and hung the Liberty Bell, _the vision to see the treasured past_ was hidden away,” Peggy murmured. “A way to read the map?”

“I thought the cipher was the map,” Bucky said.

“The cipher was the way to find the way to read the map,” Steve said. And wow, if that wasn’t the worst sentence Bucky had heard all evening. He had genuinely, in his heart of hearts, not thought this quest was going to become more complicated than stealing the Declaration of Independence. Now he was worried he had fallen victim to uncharacteristic optimism.

“_The timely shadow crosses in front of the house of Pass and Stow_,” Peggy continued. “There’s a clock on the steeple that originally housed the Liberty Bell. That steeple casts a shadow—could be the timely shadow. But at what time does the shadow fall on the place we need to look?”

Steve was starting to look little-kid-on-Christmas excited. “How’s your early American art history?”

“Passable. Not my specialty.”

“You’re going to love this,” Steve said, getting out his wallet and pulling out a hundred-dollar bill.

“Wait, stop,” Bucky said. “Everyone hold on for just one second.” Ignoring the beginning of whatever protest Steve was beginning to make, he shut his eyes. The wild goose chase across the Arctic had been one thing. Stealing the Declaration of Independence, that was another. Seeing Sam again, fleeing across state lines, DIY codebreaking, all of that Bucky could handle. But somehow, the involvement of the national currency was a bridge too far. He needed a minute, if only to let his headache recede. Bucky took some deep breaths, in and out, letting himself ignore Steve and his constant rush for a while. Then he opened his eyes. Peggy looked slightly wary, Steve all concerned. The hundred-dollar bill was still clutched in his hand. “I’d like one of those too,” Bucky said, managing a smile. “For my pain and suffering.”

Steve smiled back tightly. “The second I’m done with it,” he promised. “On the back there’s an etching of the building where the Liberty Bell was originally housed. It’s based on a painting done by a friend of Benjamin Franklin’s. I think that maybe, if I could just make out the time…” He squinted hopefully at the bill, looking like a kid who desperately wants not to need glasses.

“According to the Internet, 4:10,” Peggy said, jabbing a finger at Bucky’s screen. God bless their search engine overlords.

“So we’re going to recover pair of early American X-ray specs from the Liberty Bell at 4:10 this afternoon and then, what, steal the Constitution and take a gander at it?” Bucky clarified, carefully controlling his emotional reaction to the idea of robbing yet another national monument.

“No,” said Steve, “the cipher was written in column form along the right hand side of the Declaration, which means the map is probably left-center.”

“Oh, good,” Bucky said. At least they’d already stolen that.

“We probably will need to break into Independence Hall, though,” Peggy told him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh my god,” said Bucky, “they really are early American X-ray specs.”

Breaking into Independence Hall was significantly easier than stealing the Declaration of Independence had been. Primarily, it consisted of stepping over a velvet rope while none of the guards were looking. Steve and Peggy took the narrow staircase to the top of the steeple while Bucky kept watch at the bottom. When the clock reached 4:10 precisely, the shadow of the tower fell across a section of rooftop, ending in a point against a decorative brick archway.

“I’ve never thought much of it, but that is an odd architectural choice,” Peggy said.

“Or a strategic one,” Steve grinned. “Want to climb down there with me?”

“Not in the slightest,” Peggy told him.

Steve clambered down the side of the belltower and across the rooftop, staying low and hidden in the shadow until he reached the end. At its very tip, the shadow touched a brick carved with the symbol of the Knights Templar. He traced his fingers gently across the familiar shape. It was the exact same as the version that had been engraved on the Tesseract. 

Steve took a moment to remember the events of historical import that had happened in this building. The Continental Congress. The Constitutional Convention. The funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln. Then, regretfully, he pulled out his multitool and stabbed it into the mortar around the brick. It was soft and crumbling, clearly a different substance than what held the rest of the building up. He made short work of digging it out. Slid free from the wall, the brick was light and hollow. Inside was a cloth-wrapped bundle, which he put in the pouch of his hoodie before replacing the brick. It sat slightly crooked in its original hole, not amenable to Steve’s attempts to adjust it. Eventually, he decided it was good enough.

“No harm done to the national historic site,” he muttered, hoping that would make it true, and headed back up to meet Peggy.

“You get it?” Peggy asked when he re-summitted the tower. She was scanning the crowd around the base of the building in a pretty good impression of a soldier on an observation post for someone with no military training.

“I got it,” Steve affirmed, and they descended the belltower.

They swung by Bucky’s position, Steve silently gesturing for him to follow, and all three regrouped in the Assembly Room. The last tour group had just departed, and they were thoroughly alone. Steve pulled the bundle from his pocket and unwrapped it. Inside was a pair of glasses: round lenses, spindly silver frames, beautifully constructed and very, very old.

“Oh my god,” said Bucky, “they really are early American X-ray specs.”

Peggy took the glasses gently from Steve. Each lens had a secondary piece of glass in front of it, which could be raised or lowered by means of a delicate-looking lever. One side was red, the other blue, the overall effect resembling something a Founding Father would wear to a showing of Jaws 3D. “Benjamin Franklin invented something like these,” she said.

“I think he invented _these_,” Steve said. The glasses must have been bundled up and bricked off hundreds of years before; he wondered whose were the last hands to touch them before his own. Bucky cleared his throat. “Okay, yeah, moving on. Bucky, head out front and keep watch for the next tour group. Peggy, let’s unroll the Declaration and take a look.”

“You’re going to do that _here_?” Bucky asked.

“Uncovering the document’s last secret in the very room where it was signed? Tempting,” Peggy explained.

“You two deserve each other,” Bucky told her, and Steve hoped that was true. He loved the way she thought. “I’m going to take Steve’s suggestion and put thirty yards between me and crime.”

Peggy led Steve through the process of gently unrolling the Declaration, and together they laid it facedown on a table. Gently, Peggy put the glasses on and stood for a moment, still.

“It’s just,” she began, “all this time. It was right here.”

“May I?” Steve asked. He was trying his hardest to be polite and let her have her moment, but he also thought he might die of curiosity. She passed him the glasses, and he put them on.

The map wasn’t a map, properly, but it was beautiful. It seemed to leap off the page, an embellished cross with an elaborate triquetra at its base. A scroll unrolled across the crosspiece, with ornate script that seemed to read—

“_Heere at the wall_,” Peggy said. “_Heere_ with two e’s. Do you—”

At that moment, Bucky burst through the door. Steve took one look at his face knew it wasn’t just the next tour that was on its way. He put the glasses down, beginning to roll the Declaration back up, trying to move smoothly but quickly. “What happened?” he asked.

“Rollins,” Bucky said, and Steve began to roll faster. “He saw me. No idea how he found us, but he’s right outside—”

“Give me that, you’ll crush it,” Peggy said, slapping Steve’s hands away and taking his place.

“Pierce,” Steve said. “Fuck, I’m an idiot, of course he figured it out.” He started to think quickly, falling back on half-forgotten training to map avenues of approach and chokepoints. It was a wide-open area, and Pierce would have just as many ways to come at them as they had escape routes.

“He didn’t have the clue, how could he know—”

“Not this clue, the previous clue. He’s not here for us, he’s here for the Silence Dogood letters. The Benjamin Franklin Museum is literally down the block, this is just bad fucking timing.” Stupid, thoughtless, should have guessed— “Rollins probably just went to get a hot dog or something, this is the _dumbest_ way to get cornered—”

“Steve, we have to go,” said Peggy. “Also, we have to split up.”

“You’re right,” Steve realized, refocusing on what he could actually fix. There were four precious things he needed to protect, and he couldn’t let Pierce get his hands on all of them at once. He pulled the inner protective tube housing the Declaration from the document’s carrying case and handed it to Peggy, allowing himself a moment to look between her and Bucky. As much as he regretted leaving them to fend for themselves, they’d probably manage it better than he would. “We’ll separate the map from the glasses. Peggy, you and Bucky take the document. I’ll take the glasses and the case, and hopefully I’ll be the one they follow. Wait two minutes after I leave, then head for the 13th Street station. Ready?”

“Ready,” Peggy and Bucky echoed.

“Let’s move.”

Rumlow spotted Steve the moment he left the building. In his peripheral vision, Steve clocked him falling into step at a safe distance behind him, and he lengthened his stride, trying to gain a little ground. Rumlow kept pace, and as soon as Steve was able to round a corner and get out of sight, he broke into a full-tilt sprint.

Steve’s mother, God rest her, had held a moral objection to football and other contact sports. Steve, therefore, ran track in high school after his big growth spurt. It was because of this that he was able to outrun Rumlow over the course of eight city blocks. On block nine, Rumlow got sick of giving chase and started shooting.

As he vaulted a chain-link fence and sped down an alley lined with helpfully bulletproof dumpsters, Steve sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the soul of Sarah Rogers. Rumlow was firing wildly—if he hit him, it’d be pure dumb luck—and he was falling farther and farther behind. Coming out of the alley, he put on one last burst of speed to round the corner, glanced over his shoulder to check for pursuers, and ran full speed into the side of a police car.

It turned out that Steve's bullet-dodging, fence-leaping, and general merriment and chaos had attracted attention. He was not able to outpace the entire Philadelphia Police Department, so he found himself chained to a desk, his possessions sealed away in plastic evidence bags. A serious-looking man with an eyepatch staring across at him.

“That’s a hell of a story,” Special Agent Fury said.

“Well, it's the same story I tried to tell you guys before the Declaration was stolen,” Steve said irritably.

“By you,” Fury clarified. He was fiddling with the plastic bag holding the glasses, and Steve wanted to snap at him to be careful. He refrained. Fury was probably doing it to get a rise out of him anyway.

“In order to stop Pierce,” Steve said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “I did it alone. Dr. Carter was not involved. I have no idea where the Declaration is now.”

“You a Phillies fan, Steve?”

“This again,” Steve said. “No.”

“Got any hobbies?”

How the fuck was that relevant. How was anything other than Bucky and Peggy’s whereabouts and wellbeing relevant. “I draw a bit. Paint sometimes. Not seriously.”

“What about Raphael’s _Portrait of a Young Man_? Know anything about that?”

Steve frowned. This was a new line of questioning, and a weird one. “Renaissance art isn’t my specialty. Why?”

“What about Impressionism? Van Gogh’s _Painter on His Way to Work_, does that ring any bells?” 

“No,” Steve said, but that wasn’t precisely true. It sounded familiar. The cogs started to turn in his brain.

Fury studied Steve intently. “You really don’t know why I’m asking.”

“N—” Steve began, but then something clicked into place, and he didn’t like the shape of it at all. “Wait. _Portrait of a Young Man_—that was stolen by the Nazis. Do you think I deal in Nazi plunder?” Fury’s face didn’t move, and another piece clicked into place. “Does _Pierce_ deal in Nazi plunder?”

“Don’t worry about that. Let’s talk about your options. Door number one, you go to prison for a very long time. Door number two, you help us find the Declaration of Independence, and you still go to prison for a very long time, but you feel better inside.”

Steve considered Fury a moment. He decided the thing with Pierce could wait. It’s not like he needed another reason to track him to the ends of the earth after this—assuming it ended one day. “Is there a door that doesn't lead to prison?” he asked.

“Someone's got to go to prison, Steve,” Fury said. “You’re an impressive guy. Army ROTC, mechanical engineering degree, Special Forces—you could have easily made Colonel, maybe higher, but you resigned your commission as a Captain to study history. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A veterinarian,” Steve said, deadpan.

“Just help me understand,” Fury continued. “What kind of guy makes it through two deployments and the Combat Dive qual course, but flames out of a PhD program halfway through?” Steve opened his mouth to answer, but at that precise moment a phone rang. Steve and Fury both looked down at the evidence bag between them. The screen of Steve’s burner cell had lit up.

“If you let me answer that, I can probably help,” Steve said.

“Y’all better have that tap initiated,” Fury told the dark-haired woman and bland-looking man in the corner of the office. Then he pulled the phone from its bag and handed it to Steve.

“Rogers,” Steve said, bringing both chained hands up to his ear.

“Hello, Steven,” Pierce said. “How are you?”

“Been better,” Steve told him, tone carefully casual. He wasn’t in a position where giving in to the urge to demand answers would get him much of anywhere. “Been worse. How did you get this number?”

“A mutual friend,” Pierce said. “He told me to tell you that Tommy Weissman captured the flag, but there were no broken bones this time.” 

Steve closed his eyes briefly, relief washing over him. Pierce had the Declaration, but Bucky and Peggy were safe. “I’m wondering whether there’s anything I can do about that.”

“I want you to meet me on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid, tomorrow at noon.”

“That’s a very public place,” Steve said. “Great views of the Hudson, but I can’t imagine we’ll have much privacy.”

“Lots of witnesses, lots of bystanders,” Pierce agreed. “The concept of a private chat between us is fairly at this point, and I thought you might appreciate a trip to your hometown.”

“How generous,” Steve said dryly. He was hyperaware of all the FBI agents over his shoulder, listening in.

“I aim to please. Bring the glasses you found at Independence Hall. We can take a look at the Declaration, and then you can be on your way.”

“Just like that, huh.”

“Steven,” Pierce chided. “I’m no monster. I only ever wanted to borrow it. You can have it back the moment I’m finished.”

Steve paused and looked to Fury. The chances he would be able to bust out of jail and make it to New York when the FBI already knew where he was heading were slim. After a moment, Fury made a small motion indicating: _go on_.

“I'll be there,” Steve said.

“I look forward to it,” Pierce said. “Oh, and one more thing: tell the FBI agents listening in on this call that if they want the Declaration back, rather than a box of confetti, you'll come alone.” With that, the line went dead.

Fury leaned back in his chair. “Anything on the source?” he called.

“Nothing,” the dark-haired woman said. Steve thought about trying to make a plan, but looking around, he realized he was thoroughly alone. No friends, no resources, no way to swing the situation in his favor. For the first time in a long time, he decided the best course of action was to come along for the ride.

“Well then,” Fury said, “let’s load up the bus. Looks like we’re going to New York.”

### NEW YORK CITY

Steve had a very odd moment, standing on the deck of the USS Intrepid, where he realized it was a school day. There were tour groups around, kids clutching matching worksheets and teachers waving color-coded flags. Two little girls were holding hands, and behind them an FBI agent was pointing a video camera at Steve. There was also an agent sitting on a bench, and two more over by the hot dog cart that Steve wasn’t supposed to know about but clocked immediately. Probably more elsewhere. Light gleamed off the planes on the deck of the aircraft carrier.

“_Are you with us, Rogers?_” Agent Fury’s voice buzzed in Steve’s right ear. It wasn’t the same thing as having Bucky’s voice on the other end: a leash, rather than a lifeline.

“I'm sure not against you,” Steve said, eyeing a middle-aged woman fanning herself furiously with a visitor’s guide.

In the grand tradition of doing anything under the umbrella of a large and secretive organization, everyone waited around for a while. The FBI had had Steve show up at 11:30, and by 12:15 Steve had talked himself out of, into, and back out of the idea that Pierce was going to show, and was also starting to get hungry. The agents by the cart had actually purchased hot dogs.

“Hey, can you have one of your guys over there buy me a Gatorade?” Steve asked the open comm. One of the cart guys startled, and his partner smacked him. “I’d do it myself, but you took all my money.”

“At least the breeze is picking up,” the agent on the bench said, and Steve suddenly realized that was true. There was also a very distinctive shuddering thump rising over the typical noise of the New York crowd. Steve looked up.

A helicopter was descending over the deck of the USS Intrepid—marked as a private aircraft, coming in hot. It didn't seem to Steve like the kind of thing that would still be allowed after 9/11, if it ever had been. The agents on the open comm were communicating tensely and rapidly, trying to get some kind of identification, and hot dog guys had crouched behind the cart and drawn their weapons. A voice came on over a bullhorn, telling the chopper to pull up, and instead it dipped below the tops of the nearest buildings. A second-grader’s scavenger hunt checklist blew out of his hands, and he started to shriek. Steve turned, and Rumlow stepped out from behind a pillar and into his line of sight.

“You,” Steve said, and started towards him.

“_Who’s keeping eyes on Rogers_,” Fury cut in, but he was back in the command van and all the agents on site were busy yelling at a helicopter. Soon it was too loud for the mikes to pick up anything but the roar of the blades. Steve reached Rumlow with every intention of punching him in the jaw, but then, for the first time in his life, thought better of it.

“Where are they?” he yelled, and Rumlow smirked in the way that only a man who knows he deserves to be punched, but won’t be, could.

“Your little Marion and Sallah double act? You gotta ask the boss, Indiana,” he called.

“How am I gonna do that, if he’s not here?” Steve asked hotly.

“I’d start by going over to the starboard observation deck, behind the F-16,” Rumlow said, enunciating clearly. “After that,” he shrugged, “we’ll see how big your balls really are.”

Steve looked at Rumlow evenly, then slugged him across the jaw. Rumlow staggered back and banged his head on the pillar, looking comically surprised.

“If anyone in this situation is Marion Ravenwood, it’s me,” Steve said, and took off for the starboard observation deck. 

As he ran, the helicopter began to ascend, and voices began to filter back in over the earpiece.

“_—on Rogers!_” Fury was saying, and another voice said “_—eyes on, he’s heading for the—_” and then “_—see Pierce?_” and suddenly, Steve saw what he was looking for. Taped to the railing was the piece of paper from the Valkyrie, the symbol of the Knights Templar inked on in Steve’s blood. There was also a carefully-drawn arrow, pointing down, and a smiley face.

“Motherfucker,” Steve said, but he had already resolved to act. “Fury?”

“_Rogers, if you don’t get your ass back to the meeting point—_”

“Sir, I’m still not against you. But you asked me what kind of man I am—all my life, I’ve tried to be one who acts on my principles. That’s what I’m going to do now. You have no reason to trust me, you don’t even _know_ me, but please know I’m right, I’m doing the right thing. I hope someday I can show you that,” Steve said, and leapt over the railing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Steven,” Pierce murmured into the quiet. “Good to see you’re doing well. You all right? No broken bones? A fall like that could kill a lesser man.”
> 
> “Nah, it was cool,” Steve said. His voice was too loud for the echoing space, just like when they were kids. “You should try it some time.”

Bucky stood on the corner outside Trinity Church, ballcap pulled down over his face, worrying relentlessly. Pierce had promised to have a dive team ready to move in on Steve as soon as he hit the water, as well as a change of clothes and a clean van ready to ferry him back into the city when they made landfall on the Jersey side of the river. Steve was going to be pissed about the Jersey thing, but he had gotten arrested by the FBI while wearing a Phillies cap, so he could suck it up. Still, at this point Bucky trusted Pierce much less far than he could throw him, despite the _dive teams_ apparently at his beck and call.

When the van finally pulled up, Steve stumbled out, alive, intact, and looking like nothing so much as a tomcat who had been trapped in a thunderstorm, then brought inside and toweled off by a well-meaning twelve year old. Bucky felt a bone-deep sense of relief.

“Thank god,” he said. “Someone finally bought you a shirt that fits.”

Steve looked down at himself, frowning. “The other shirt didn’t fit?” he asked. “Peggy picked it, she said it was fine.” Peggy let out a choked-off noise that might have been a cough, and when Bucky glanced at her, she was looking incredibly smug.

“Enough chitchat,” said one of the two nameless goons from the van. “Boss wants to see you, and he wants to see the glasses.”

“_Boss_ can wait a minute until someone tells me what the hell is going on,” Steve said, bitchy. The Hudson River had apparently not agreed with his patience.

“Ask your girlfriend,” the goon said, leaning hard into the overall goon aesthetic. “Apparently she’s in charge now.” Steve looked momentarily perplexed at the idea he had a girlfriend before blinking and turning to Peggy, abashed and excited.

“We made a deal,” Peggy told him. “Pierce and Rollins got the Declaration off us, but after we got away, we realized you had been caught and we needed to break you out to get it back.”

“We figured escaping from jail is more a criminal thing, so I got us in contact with the criminal-est criminal we know,” Bucky added.

“Bucky tracked this one’s cell phone the whole way,” Peggy said, pointing at the goon. “Deal was, if they double-cross us, we call the FBI and tell them where to find their whole little gang. If not, you and Pierce take a look at the Declaration using the glasses from Independence Hall, and after he’s done, we get the document back.”

“And boss gets the treasure,” the goon added. Peggy’s lips thinned briefly before smoothing out into impartiality. “So I get my cut.”

Steve looked like he was gearing up to object to that last part of the plan, so Bucky shot him a crazed and extremely obvious glare. Steve was blessedly silent, and the goon failed to notice. He did not seem too bright overall. “Okay,” said Steve. “Well, since we’re standing at Trinity Church, I assume Peggy already figured out the first half of the clue.”

“_Heere at the Wall_,” Peggy quoted, “over a trinity knot. Trinity Church is at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway, Broadway was called Heeren Wegh by Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century. Simple.”

“So simple I’m hurt you didn’t assume _I_ figured it out,” Bucky said. “I’m adding it to my long list of hurts.”

“Okay,” Steve said, giving the impression of a man thinking very quickly, “okay.” He nodded at the goons. “Take me to Pierce.”

The goons escorted Steve, Bucky, and Peggy down the center aisle of Trinity Church. The interior was dim and quiet. There were no people visible other than Pierce, who was seated in a pew near the front, his arm draped over the backrest. He didn’t turn to watch them approach. Bucky hoped he had paid the staff to stay away, and that they wouldn’t find a pile of bodies heaped behind the altar. 

Steve slid into the pew beside Pierce, and Bucky and Peggy took the row behind them. The goons sat in the row behind that, which made Bucky’s scalp itch.

“Steven,” Pierce murmured into the quiet. “Good to see you’re doing well. You all right? No broken bones? A fall like that could kill a lesser man.”

“Nah, it was cool,” Steve said. His voice was too loud for the echoing space, just like when they were kids. “You should try it some time.”

“Steven,” Pierce said again, chiding. He slid his hand down to grasp Steve’s shoulder, and Bucky shuddered on his behalf. “We’re in a place of worship. Where did you go to high school again? Was it Nazareth Regional? I went to Bishop Loughlin myself, you know.”

“Was that before or after you started dealing in art stolen by the Nazis?” Steve said. Bucky sat bolt upright—was that an educated guess, or had Steve been told something by the FBI?—but Pierce just sighed.

“Young people. Always trying to judge what they can’t possibly understand. A shame. Well, on to business, I suppose. Let’s take a look at the map then, shall we?”

Bucky watched as Steve and Pierce removed the Declaration from its tube and unrolled it, heads bent low over the document. Steve pulled the glasses from his jacket pocket and, after a moment of hesitation, offered them to Pierce. From behind, Bucky couldn’t see the expression on his face, but he was genuinely impressed by the level of self-control it must be taking for Steve to not escalate the situation.

“Remarkable,” Pierce said, and Peggy twitched in the seat next to Bucky. “_Heere at the Wall_ indeed. But surely there’s more to it.”

“The levers, the ones holding the secondary lenses in place,” Steve gritted out. “Raise the left one, then the right one.”

“_Remarkable_,” Pierce said again. Peggy had a death grip on the seat of the shared pew, knuckles stark white against the dark wood. “Would you like to see?”

Carefully, Steve took back the glasses. “_Parkington Lane_,” he read. “_Beneath Parkington Lane_. Well, I guess you have another stop to make,” he said, pocketing the glasses and extricating the Declaration of Independence from Pierce. “Peggy, would you like to—”

Peggy snatched the document back from Steve as carefully as one could snatch anything, and began to store it away. “One moment, please,” Pierce said calmly. “Why would the map send me to Trinity Church, only to send me away again immediately?”

Steve shrugged and stood up, his advantage in height and overall mass suddenly apparent. “Seems like a you problem,” he said. “Bucky, Peggy, we’re leaving.”

“Oh, you can’t leave yet,” Pierce said. “After all, you haven’t held up your end of the bargain. I don’t have the treasure yet.”

“I can leave whenever I want. Find someone else to figure out the clues. Bucky, you’re the math guy, what are our odds here?”

Bucky shrugged, taking his cues from Steve, and he and Peggy stood up as well. “Three of us, three of them? I’ve seen Dr. Carter make a tackle, I think our chances are pretty good.” Steve stepped out of the pew and headed for the exit, and he and Peggy followed close behind. Pierce didn’t move.

“There’s something you don’t understand about the stakes here,” he called from his seat, just as Steve pushed open the main doors. Steve took one step out into the sunlight and paused. Bucky peered over his shoulder and saw a black van parked on the curb, Rumlow and Rollins both leaned up against it. Rumlow had the beginnings of a nasty bruise darkening the right side of his jaw, but Rollins was a mess: busted-up nose, black eye, arm in a sling, probably missing a couple of teeth behind his split lip.

“Okay, I got Rumlow,” Steve said, “but which of you guys laid into Rollins?”

With his good hand, Rollins flipped them off, then slid open the door of the van to reveal Sam Wilson: wrists and mouth duct taped, still in his pajamas, and looking dangerously pissed off.

“Shit,” said Bucky. “Sam hates getting kidnapped.”

“Why don’t we all come back inside and talk about this?” Pierce called pleasantly from deep inside the church. Steve’s face had hardened into a mask, and he turned on his heel and walked back inside.

Pierce had his goon squad put their merry band to work wandering around the bowels of the church and searching for anything conveniently labeled _Parkington Lane_. Bucky’s calculation of their odds had changed rapidly when the balance shifted from three vs. three to four vs. five, particularly given that one of the four had his hands taped together and two of the five had guns. Consequently, a plan other than “just leave” was needed. Steve, Bucky, Peggy, and a fully irate Sam tried to develop one in short bursts of whispered conversation. It wasn’t very effective.

“Cooperation only lasts until the status quo changes,” Peggy hissed through her teeth as she passed Bucky on her way to look under a stack of boxes that probably didn’t date to last month, much less two centuries ago

“I’m sorry I got us into this, Buck, this is my responsibility,” Steve murmured, sticking his head into an old fireplace and peering up. Some ancient dust trickled down, and he sneezed ferociously, then decamped to check under the pews. Sam wandered up to take his place.

“I know Steve’s going around saying this is his fault and while there’s an argument to be made there, I want you to know I absolutely one hundred percent blame you for this as well as for a number of other things I will enumerate at a later date,” he said very quickly, gazing at the ceiling as if Parkington Lane might an avenue for the pigeons walking along the rafters.

Bucky coughed twice, deliberately, in a way he hoped Sam would accurately interpret as _fuck you_. Sam flipped him off with both duct-taped hands.

“Quit stalling!” said Rumlow, waving a gun nonspecifically. Bucky looked over to where he had spent the previous five minutes drawing patterns in the dust with the toe of his sneaker and shrugged to communicate, _that’s fair_. Peggy pulled out the burner phone she bought to contact Pierce.

“No cops!” yelled Rollins.

“Did anyone try googling Parkington Lane and Trinity Church together, though?” Peggy asked.

“Damn,” said one of the goons, and about twenty seconds later: “he’s downstairs.”

***

Parkington Lane turned out to be a third-degree Master Mason, and also, a skeleton slowly disintegrating in the crypt below the church. “Sorry,” Steve grunted, removing him from his no-longer-final resting place and watching, mortified, as Rollins and his one functional arm let the coffin tip sideways and spill his dust and bones out across the floor.

“Okay,” said Bucky. “Who wants to go down the creepy tunnel inside the tomb first?”

“Thank you for volunteering,” Pierce said smoothly. “Dave, Vlad, you wait here. If anyone comes back up without me… Well, it’s not complicated. Just shoot them. After you, Mr. Barnes.”

As Bucky passed by Steve on his way into the tunnel, he gripped his shoulder briefly.

“Together, I guess,” he said. Steve caught his wrist.

“Just like always,” he said.

There was no way Sam could make it down the tunnel with both hands duct taped behind his back, so Steve untied him under Rollins’ resentful glare. Sam held Steve’s eyes briefly, and Steve couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. He quirked an eyebrow, and Sam burst out laughing.

“I am having just the weirdest day,” he said, and followed Bucky into the tunnel, Rollins close at his heels. Peggy was up next, and Steve suddenly realized that he hadn’t had a real moment with her since Philadelphia, and that he desperately wanted to.

“Hey,” he said urgently, and with no real sense of direction. “I just wanted to say—”

Peggy reached out and grabbed Steve by the shirt front, and he leaned into her automatically. Her lips met his, and she kissed him firmly but gently, just a small thing on the grand scale. She didn’t smell like anything, or like the clean nothing of the soap at the Motel 6. The tip of her nose was cool, but her lips were warm, and Steve brought his hand up the cradle her jaw and kissed her back.

“Tell me later,” Peggy said, and Steve realized he very badly wanted to make it out from the creepy tunnel under the tomb. He followed Peggy down, and Rumlow then Pierce followed him, and soon their way was lit only by cell phone flashlights and, in Steve’s case, sheer optimism.

The tunnel wasn’t long, and at the end it opened into a wide space. There was a wooden platform ahead of them, and beyond that, darkness.

“I think this is a lantern,” Bucky said, eyeing the huge glass and metal structure that hung from the ceiling and was roped to the railing of the wooden platform. “Anyone have a light?”

“Peggy smokes,” Steve said absently. The acoustics of the space said cave; Steve’s gut feeling said pit.

“Only in stressful situations, and the last couple of days have qualified,” Peggy muttered, and pulled out a Zippo lighter. The lantern caught easily—whatever this space was, it was remarkably dry, especially for something underground. Sam unlooped the rope anchoring it and the lantern swung out into the center.

The space was a pit, so deep that looking down at the bottom gave Steve the sensation or looking through a telescope backwards. A long wooden staircase spiralled around the outer wall, and in the center an ancient-looking dumbwaiter, at least ten feet across, swayed slightly in an impossible breeze.

“What are you waiting for?” Rollins asked, gesturing at Sam.

“Uh, you to go first,” said Sam. Rollins puffed up himself to loom and threaten. Before he could say anything, Peggy stepped out onto the platform.

“When this is over, last one to the treasure buys the first round,” she said, and carefully began to pick her way down the stairwell. One by one, everyone else followed, Pierce bringing up the rear.

“Rollins, back off,” Steve said for the third time in a hundred meters. Rollins kept crowding up towards him and away from Sam, who had a brain in his head and the ability to use it and was therefore maintaining a safe follow distance.

“Scared, pretty boy?” Rollins asked, and Steve responded hotly.

“Yeah, that you’re gonna fuck with the weight distribution and we’re both gonna die when this thing breaks,” Steve said, gingerly but quicky stepping onto the next landing and turning around to argue more directly. “Watch what you’re—”

Steve was interrupted by a slight trembling of the walls, which slowly increased in intensity to a faint roar. The stairwell creaked dangerously.

“What the hell did you do?” Rumlow called from behind Sam.

“We didn’t do anything,” said Bucky. “I think that’s the 4 train above us.”

The whole party paused to look up. A faint dust was falling from above, and Steve blinked it out of his eyes just in time to see Rollins, neck still craned upwards, take an awkward step down, trip, and topple almost silently over the edge, unable to catch himself with his one good arm.

There was a beat where everything was quiet, Sam and Steve looking at each other, shocked, across a suddenly empty space.

“What just happened?” called Peggy, and Rumlow said “Rollins?”, and then Rollins, or at least his body, hit a support structure somewhere on the way down, and the whole stairwell pitched towards the center of the pit.

The landing Steve was on fell out from under him, and Steve leapt on instinct, suspended in the air for two wild and uncertain seconds before landing, with a grace born of years of physical training and a few precious moments of sheer dumb luck, on the wide, solid dumbwaiter hanging nearby.

“Holy shit,” said Sam, the railing he had grabbed onto beginning to splinter, “fuck it,” and he swung himself down onto the platform after Steve. Rumlow, Bucky, and Pierce were all more stable section of the stairwell up above, but Peggy’s landing had collapsed to a nearly-vertical position. She clung on like a rock climber, Declaration slung over her back, using hand and footholds in the gaps between the old wooden boards, which groaned under the strain. Steve started towards her automatically, but he was brought to an abrupt halt by the edge of the dumbwaiter. She was way too far below them to leap up and grab it.

“Peggy, hang on,” Steve said. “Sam, we need to lower this thing down to her.”

“I’m working on it,” Sam said. “These ropes are two hundred years old, they’re not cooperating.”

Steve went belly-down on the platform and stretched towards Peggy as far as he could, which wasn’t nearly close enough. The board Peggy was gripping with her right hand snapped in half, and she faltered a moment before grabbing its neighbor, which audibly protested.

“Steve,” Peggy said, “I’m going to have to jump while I can.”

“No,” said Steve, “we’re coming to get you, just hold on.”

“I trust you,” Peggy said, and Steve strained towards her, to no effect. “But I need you to do something.”

“Peggy,” Steve started, and she shook her head.

“Tell me whether to fall left or right,” she said, and Steve’s blood ran cold. Then the rest of the world fell away, and Steve looked to the stairwell below.

The right side was closer to where Peggy was, and it looked almost perfectly level. As Steve’s gaze trailed down the supporting scaffolding, though, it looked untested, and he couldn’t see whether it relied on the beams that Rollins had hit. The left was tilted dramatically, but its broken supports had settled into place, and it looked to have taken a beating from some of the debris and stayed standing.

“Left,” Steve said, and hoped to God he wasn’t wrong. 

“Okay,” said Peggy, and the board in her right hand gave way again. This time, she used it to unsling the Declaration from her back. “Catch.”

The tube arced high through the air. Steve had to roll to the edge of the dumbwaiter to catch it. He snagged it by the strap and secured it over his own back, then paused, afraid to look.

“Oh my god,” he heard Bucky say, and his heart sank. He peered down over the edge, and Peggy waved cheerfully from the lower section of stairwell.

“Okay, that was actually sick,” Rumlow said.

“An impressive display of gymnastics, Dr. Carter,” Pierce called, and Peggy flipped him off.

“I must say, I’m extremely relieved the stairs held,” Peggy said, her voice only trembling faintly.

“Understatement of the century,” Sam muttered, still fussing with the ropes.

“I can’t believe you jumped,” Steve said. His heart was pounding a million miles per hour, and he felt like he might throw up. “I can’t—”

“Did you catch the Declaration?” Peggy asked.

“Yes, but you _jumped_—”

“And you caught the Declaration for me, which is what mattered. You did everything I could have asked of you,” Peggy said firmly. “Thank you.”

Bucky stared down at Peggy, looking shell-shocked. “You two deserve each other, you do,” he said. “You’re both off your rockers. Like holy shit motherfucker, if I ever fall off something tall you should take no comfort in catching a piece of paper. I would fucking come back and haunt your dreams.”

Steve opened his mouth to defend himself, then figured that no defense was possible at this point. Bucky was right, the whole quest was insane. While he was coming to this realization, Sam finally managed to get the end of the rope anchoring the dumbwaiter untied. “Okay, help me figure out what the hell to do with this,” he said.

It took Sam and Steve, with their combined physical and mental prowess, almost fifteen minutes to figure out how to move the dumbwaiter. Rumlow spent some time calling out to Rollins, which was upsetting, and yelling threats at Sam and Steve, which was irritating. Peggy offered color commentary on how stupid it would have been for her to try to keep hanging from the wall, and Bucky ate a snack. Apparently he had stuck some pistachios in his jacket pocket before leaving, making him the best-prepared for the underground expedition.

They finally got the dumbwaiter moving, swinging down to pick up Peggy before heading back up to Rumlow, Pierce and Bucky. Once they were all on board, Sam threw the lever to head back up to the surface, and Pierce put one finger up.

“Hold on a moment,” he said. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back to safety,” Sam said quizzically, “so we don’t all die in this hole in the ground?”

“Absolutely not,” said Pierce.

Steve looked around at his friends—sweaty, angry, and uniformly pretty jacked—and back at Pierce and Rumlow. “I don’t think you get to decide that,” he said.

Pierce sighed and pulled a gun from a shoulder holster, leveling it at Steve’s chest. “I didn’t want it to go like this, Steven,” he said, “but you’re risking a lot if you try to fight me up here.”

“Pierce, this is stupid,” said Steve, putting his hands up slowly. The dumbwaiter was swaying subtly, and he didn’t want anyone to make any sudden moves. “Let’s go back up, get some supplies and regroup. Something is going to go wrong if we go down there unprepared, it can’t possibly be worth it.”

“So you four can run off, or call the police, or otherwise cause me an enormous mess? No thank you,” Pierce said. “You can’t possibly believe that any of your lives are more important to me than Rollins’, or that Rollins was more important than what’s down there.”

“And now Rollins is what’s down there,” Bucky said, turning to Rumlow. “This who you want to be working for?”

“Money’s real good,” Rumlow said, pulling his gun as well.

“Steven,” Pierce said. “You understand. You’re like me. You’d risk your life for what’s down there.”

Steve stared across at Pierce. The set of the man’s face was still pleasantly expressionless, and Steve could see the differences between them as clear as day. He was just disappointed it had taken him so long. “I’d risk _my_ life,” he said. “Never theirs. It’s their choice too.”

“Pretending doesn’t help anyone. I know what you’ve given up in search of this treasure. You have no money, no family, no job, no reputation. It’s the most the most important thing in your world.”

“I can’t stop you from taking me down there,” Steve told him. “But as soon as we get there, I’ll show you what’s important to me.”

The descent into the pit was tense and near-silent, other than the creaking of the ropes. After what felt like an eternity, the dumbwaiter came to rest gently against the stone floor. At the bottom of the pit, there was a chamber carved from the rock. It was dimly lit, about the size of Steve’s living and dining area. It was also completely empty. 

“I hope you’re fucking happy,” Steve told Pierce, as the party fanned out to examine the space. Peggy started to circle the room, running her fingers across the stone. Bucky kicked at some of the debris from the stairwell, then clearly thought better of it after a sharp elbow from Sam. There was nothing there. Steve had let them all down.

“Don’t play games with me, Rogers. Where’s the treasure.”

“I’m hiding it behind my back,” Steve said wildly. “I’m done. It’s _gone_.” His voice echoed in the cramped space.

“It can’t be _gone_,” Pierce said, “and moreover, you don’t get to be done.”

“Yeah?” Steve said. There was a deep well of disappointment inside him, but it was rapidly filling with anger, hurt, and shame. There was no outlet. He needed to get them all out of this pit and away from Pierce. Across the room, Rumlow was wandering around staring up at the entrance to the pit like a moron. In a split-second decision, Steve rushed him.

He got about five yards before a bolt of sound cracked the air in the room in half, and a shocking pain tore through his leg. For a moment Steve just kept going, but his leg suddenly and firmly disagreed with that course of action and he went crashing to the ground.

After that it was all a little bit confusing. Sam came barrelling towards him, and he also saw Peggy go for Pierce but she stopped, her hands up. Steve twisted around to try and find Bucky, certain he would know to try for the dumbwaiter. He had, but Rumlow was closer by and armed. Bucky and Peggy both had guns trained on them. Pierce and Rumlow were—leaving? They were rising up in the air, and a lot of people were yelling. His leg was on fire, and he almost took a swing at Sam when he put all his weight through his knee onto Steve’s femoral artery. Sam seized him by the wrist, and Steve realized he was trying to stop the bleeding.

Bucky was shouting something at Pierce, who shook his head once, deliberate, and turned towards Steve. Steve thought he was being asked a question, maybe two questions. People were still yelling. He focused on Sam—yes, he could hear him, yes, he could feel that, yes, it hurt. Peggy was talking to Pierce, and Steve kept trying to look at her, make sure she was okay, but Sam made him pay attention. Bucky shouted something else, looking wild-eyed at whatever Sam was doing, so Steve reached down to check on his leg. His hand came away warm and wet, and Sam said “Whoa there, hey,” and then Steve passed out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There has to be _something_,” Steve said, and Bucky closed his eyes, preparing to receive the same speech for the fifth time. “A secondary air shaft, and escape route in case of cave-ins—the builders here were eccentric, not reckless.”
> 
> “When it comes to massive underground cave complexes used to hide buried treasure, what’s the difference?” Sam asked mildly.

When Steve woke up, Bucky almost fainted himself in relief. Sam had said he would, but it was different to know for sure.

“Hey, do you remember what happened?” Sam asked.

“I figured it out,” mumbled Steve. “Pierce shot me.”

“Great detective work, Sherlock,” Bucky said. His voice came out all funny, and he had to clear his throat.

“What happened after?” Steve asked.

“I fed them a fake clue,” Peggy said. She sounded businesslike, but her lips were pressed together very, very tightly. “I told them the winding staircase was a part of Freemason teachings, and the lantern at the top was the same one Thomas Newton hung from the steeple of the Old North Church.”

“But that’s not true,” Steve said, frowning. Even without his brain all the way online, he was still a pedantic nerd. Bucky stifled a laugh.

“Right, it was a fake clue,” said Peggy patiently. “So he didn’t kill us all.” Steve frowned even more deeply. 

“Call for help?” he asked. 

“No service,” Sam said. 

“Climb back up?”

“I checked the stairwell, there’s no way,” Bucky offered. “Not unless we want to end up looking like Rollins, whom, incidentally, I found.” He was trying not to think too hard about the finding, actually.

“Pierce can’t possibly think he’ll find the treasure without us,” Steve said. “He’s never solved a clue on his own.”

“He says if he needs us, he knows where to find us,” Peggy said grimly. 

“Okay,” Steve said, “okay. What’s our limiting factor in terms of how long we can last down here?” Bucky glanced over to Sam, hoping that as giver of first aid, he would be the bearer of bad news. Steve figured it out on his own, though. He looked down at his leg. “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Steve—“ Sam began, but Steve shook his head.

“I guess we’re just going to have to find the other way out.”

The existence of another way out was news to Bucky, and after thirty minutes of searching, he was ready to chalk it up to wishful thinking on Steve’s part. The four of them had examined every inch of the room twice, and their adrenaline had faded, leaving behind something Bucky was loathe to call boredom, even though boredom was probably accurate.

“So, Sam,” said Peggy, breaking the dull silence. “How did you meet Steve?”

“Grad school,” Sam said. “Which I did not get kicked out of.”

That was a bit of a low blow, and Bucky decided to fire back with his finest ammunition. “We dated,” he offered. 

“_Lies_,” hissed Sam. 

“Sam was the president of a student veterans’ association we were all in,” Steve said grumpily. Sam had made him lie down with his foot propped up, and he wasn’t taking it with good grace.

“I was the treasurer,” Bucky elaborated. “He was very taken with my organizational skills at the time.”

“Sure, that’s what I was taken with,” said Sam. “Your famous organizational skills.”

Bucky’s organizational skills were _above average_, thank you very much. “Hey, I was a non-commissioned officer—”

“Me too, and I outranked you—”

“Guys,” Peggy said, “why don’t you channel some of this energy into seeing whether you can yell loud enough for someone above ground to hear us.”

The yelling didn’t help. Forty-five minutes later, Steve, having swallowed several times the recommended dose of the Advil Bucky had in his pocket, was pacing the room like an angry bull while bleeding slowly. The effect was not particularly good for Bucky’s nerves.

“You really should sit down,” Sam said hoarsely, head tipped back against the wall, eyes shut.

“Got any eights?” Peggy asked. 

“Fuck,” said Bucky, looking back to his hand, and gave her his last card. “I’m out.” 

“While I’m always happy to win things, I’m over this game.” Peggy said. “Wanna look at everything in the room again?”

“Only if Steve promises to sit down while we take a turn,” Bucky bargained.

“There has to be _something_,” Steve said, and Bucky closed his eyes, preparing to receive the same speech for the fifth time. “A secondary air shaft, and escape route in case of cave-ins—the builders here were eccentric, not reckless.”

“When it comes to massive underground cave complexes used to hide buried treasure, what’s the difference?” Sam asked mildly.

“Intent,” Steve said hotly, and Peggy reached out and put a hand on his arm.

“Steve—” she began.

“It can’t end here—”

“Of course it doesn’t _end_ here,” said Sam, and Steve paused. Bucky cracked open an eyelid and peered at Sam.

“What makes you say that?” he asked. Things were feeling pretty final.

“Listen, Steve, the treasure’s always been your thing, right? It’s not that the rest of us didn’t believe you—God knows I spent enough nights at the bar listening to you lay it all out for me, and Bucky up and followed you around the world. But it was always your thing to believe in—its existence, its importance, that was all you. But now we’re down here,” he said, gesturing around the empty, echoing space, “and for the first time, I’m Steve Rogers levels of certain that the treasure is real, and more than that, that it matters.”

“I don’t understand, there’s nothing here,” Steve said.

“What the hell are you talking about? There’s a massive underground pit in the middle of Manhattan! There’s a rickety staircase, and a weird lantern thing, and an entrance built into some dude’s literal tomb. Think about the labor required, the thousands of pounds of wood and stone and brick. This isn’t some Revolutionary War fairy tale to distract the British, this is a real hiding place for something important. No matter what happens to us, this isn’t over.”

“Why the bricks, though?” Bucky interrupted. He had noticed them before, but Sam mentioning them sparked a connection in his mind.

“Huh?” asked Steve. 

“This chamber was carved out of stone,” Bucky said. “So why is that far wall made out of bricks?”

“It’s technically masonry, and I thought that too,” Steve said, “but I checked. Not one of them is loose, and the couple that are missing or cracked have solid stone behind them.”

“The bricks are weird, though,” Bucky said. The answer was somewhere right in front of him, he could feel it. “Weird and square. And actually,” he said, getting up and moving towards the wall, “a few of them are cracked, but only one is missing.”

“Yeah,” said Steve, watching him warily. “Where you heading with this, Buck?”

Bucky reached into the hole with his bare hand, feeling around the interior. “You’re a humanities person, Steve, and also kind of a blunt instrument by nature. But I was thinking about it, and sometimes, a very precisely applied small force does more than an indiscriminately applied big force.”

“Yeah, I’ve gotten out of a Chinese finger trap before,” Steve said. He sounded irritable, so Bucky ignored him. The square where the absent brick should be was perfectly smooth, without any last remnants of mortar clinging to it.

“_The secret lies with Charlotte_, right? That’s what Erskine told you.” 

“Buck, what are you saying,” Steve demanded.

“What I’m saying is, I’m about to do something either really cool or really dumb,” Bucky said, and took the Tesseract out of his jacket pocket, where he had packed it alongside the pistachios, playing cards, Advil, a bottle of water, a phone charger, and a flask of whiskey (the essentials). He held it up to the wall; it was a perfect match. Holding his breath, Bucky slid the cube into place, decisively but gently. The was a horrible moment of silence, then a wonderful, wonderful click.

The entire rear wall of the chamber fell away; Bucky had to rear back to dodge the falling masonry. After a moment, the dust settled enough to reveal a blank stone wall, a perfect arch carved from the center and a dark tunnel behind it.

“Bucky,” Steve said, in a tone Bucky immediately assumed was admonishment but after a moment recognized as pure awe.

“After you,” Bucky said, with a sweeping gesture towards the opening.

The tunnel was short, short enough that Bucky could see all the way down it by the light of his phone flashlight. Steve had stopped at the end of it, and beyond him Bucky could see the outlines of humanoid figures. A shiver ran involuntarily down his spine, and he inched up closer to Steve.

The treasure chamber was big—Bucky couldn’t tell how big. There were groups of statues around, some with cloths draped over them like shrouds and others simply standing in the open. Sam, whose turn it was to hold the Declaration on the principle that if he was going to be involved in this mess he should at least get to do something cool, crouched near a pile of tightly rolled papyrus scrolls, reaching out to carefully brush one with a finger. Steve was turning slowly in a circle, trying to take it all in at once. Bucky spotted a statue of a strapping-looking blue man with a terrific goatee.

“I’m in love,” he announced to the room at large, which was not paying attention. “This man and I are running away together.”

Suddenly, the room filled with a blaze of light, and Peggy clicked shut her Zippo. She had found a trough filled with some kind of lamp oil and lit it, the flame running down the center of the room, branching off every few dozen meters and forming a grid. The room was enormous—it wasn’t a chamber, it was a _cavern_, at least the length of a football field, if not two. The floor was a maze of artifacts: to Bucky’s untrained eye, it seemed to cover all of human existence, Hellenic statues jammed in next to Egyptian pharaohs, a smiling Buddha rubbing elbows with an Ethiopian Jesus. In between there were crates, trunks, stacks of parchment, an entire chariot, at least one temple that had been picked up and moved in its entirety—the Declaration of Independence was likely far from the most valuable thing in the room. 

“If only Abraham could see this,” Bucky heard Steve say, but he was distracted from Steve’s wistfulness as his eye caught on the most beautiful sight in the entire world.

“Bucky, are you crying?” Peggy asked, and Bucky nodded. 

“Look,” he said. “Stairs.”

***

The first thing they did when they made it above ground was call the ambulance, which arrived about fifteen seconds before the FBI did. As the paramedics loaded Steve up, Nick Fury climbed right in behind him and shut the door.

“See, this is what happens when you don’t stick to the plan,” he said, gesturing at Steve’s hastily bandaged leg.

“Nice to see you too,” Steve told him, which was almost true. “Am I going to the hospital, or are you here to tenderly dress my wounds?”

“Apparently I have about five minutes before the EMTs get real insistent on that front,” Fury told him. “Where’s the Declaration?”

“Right here,” said Steve, gently extricating the tube from the straps on his stretcher and handing it over. “Good as new.”

Fury blinked in surprise. “Do they have you on the good drugs already, son?”

“Not as far as I’m aware.”

“So you handed over your only bargaining chip because…”

“Because it’s not a bargaining chip.”

Outside, a siren cut off, and there was a long silence. “You’re a very strange man, Rogers, you know that?” Fury said finally. Steve did, in fact, know that. “Got anything else for me?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yeah, if you stand in the basement of the church and head straight down, you’re gonna find the treasure of the Knights Templar. I’d suggest bringing some floodlights, a hoist, and like—pretty much all of the archaeologists, probably.”

Fury looked evenly at Steve. “You know, the Templars and the Freemasons believed that the treasure was too great for any one man to have. That's why they went to all that trouble to hide it away.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, startled, and looked at Fury more closely. The man’s expression was as smooth and blank as ever, so he moved on cautiously. “The Founding Fathers thought the same thing about government. But they didn’t always get it right, did they? We get so caught up in wresting power away from the _wrong_ people that we forget to return it to the _people_.”

“So what’s your solution? Communism?”

“Repatriation. The Smithsonian, the Egyptian Museum, the Nation Museum of Brazil… There's thousands of years of world history down there. It belongs to the world, and everybody in it.”

“Interesting,” Fury said, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. It was hard to say, but Steve thought he might almost be impressed. “And what are your demands?”

“I don’t have demands, I have requests,” Steve said. “You got a pen and paper?”

“Don’t worry, I’m going to remember this conversation.”

Steve nodded and took a deep breath. “Dr. Carter gets off completely clean,” he began, heading down his mental list. “Not even a little Post-it on her service record. Credit for the find goes to Dr. Abraham Erskine and his entire family, living and deceased, with the assistance of James Barnes and Samuel Wilson. As for me, I’d really love not to go to prison. I can't even begin to describe how much I would love not to go to prison.”

“Someone's got to go to prison, Steve,” Fury said firmly, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “You think you can help with that?”

Steve grinned, only in part to hide a wince at the twinge of pain that suddenly shot down his leg. “If the full power and might of the FBI can get you to Boston by nightfall, I think I can.”


	7. Chapter 7

### TAIPEI, TAIWAN

#### ONE YEAR LATER

The knock on Steve’s hotel door was sudden, loud, and entirely unwanted.

“Steve, make it stop,” Peggy said.

“Ugh,” said Steve, burying his head under his pillow. “Can’t. Too tired.”

“He’s your friend, make him go away.”

Steve rolled over to look at her and got momentarily distracted. The neon lights filtering in through the gap in the curtains caught her hair just so. He focused. “I seem to recall that last week when you were both making fun of me for not knowing that a cheese grater was different from a vegetable peeler, he was _your_ friend.”

“Correct,” Peggy said, “and we’re taking turns, so this week he’s yours.”

Steve sighed, unable to offer an adequate rebuttal at three in the morning. He sat up and pulled on his boxers before opening the door. 

“Did you see the news?” Bucky asked, shouldering his way into to room. “Hey Peggy.” Peggy waved halfheartedly from the bed, making no further attempt to sit upright. Bucky stopped in the middle of the room. He was wearing his tight jeans and his tighter t-shirt, the back of which was soaked in sweat. There was glitter in his hair. 

“Dude, we have to be at the museum for the opening in like, five hours,” Steve said. 

“And I have to make the most of our global tour of the world’s finest museums filled with shit I only care about a medium amount,” Bucky said. “How often do you think I’m going to have the opportunity to have my international flights funded by a grateful public?”

“You’re going to be hungover in the photos,” Steve said. “Also, Sam is going to notice, and I’m going to have to deal with twelve more rounds of _Bucky thinks he can do whatever he wants, which is true, but I’m going to be resentful and shitty about it_.”

“Not true, because Sam came with me,” Bucky said, brandishing a finger at Steve. 

“_What_?”

“Give us your news or face death,” Peggy said, a forearm slung over her brow like a fainting Victorian woman, if the fainting Victorian woman had been a champion javelin thrower in her youth and should not be trifled with. 

“Oh, yeah! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a conviction!” Bucky said, fumbling his cell phone out of his pants pocket and brandishing it triumphantly. 

“We have a lot of convictions,” Steve said, frowning. 

“Nah, we have principles but no convictions, Pierce has no principles, but several bona fide felony convictions.”

“Oh damn, I forgot that was likely happening today,” Peggy said, sitting bolt upright. “Bloody time change, I lost track.”

“Lemme see,” Steve said, grabbing for the phone. “Manslaughter, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit theft, wire fraud—when did he have time to commit wire fraud?—trespassing on government property. Wait. Where’s the assault with a deadly weapon charge?”

Bucky winced. “Sorry, buddy, he got off on that one. Apparently the jury thought you were a legitimate threat of unlawful and immediate violence.”

“Hell yeah I was, but that shouldn’t mean he was allowed to _shoot me in the leg_—”

“Let’s focus on the positives here, Steve,” Peggy said, scrolling through her own phone. “Did you see they’re referring him to Interpol? It looks like there’s an investigation related to the sale of art plundered by the Nazis.”

“He’s going to be in jail forever, Steve,” Bucky said. “We should celebrate.”

“The ribbon cutting tomorrow will be pretty celebratory,” Steve said.

“No, we should celebrate _now_.”

“It’s three in the morning! We have obligations to—”

“I think Bucky has a point, actually,” said Peggy, and Steve blinked at her. “It’s been a long year—a great year, don’t get me wrong, but a long one. It’s over now. Let’s break the tension. Come dance with me, Steve.”

“Or at least buy enough of those shots they sell at 7-Eleven to do karaoke with me,” Bucky said.

Steve looked between the two people who knew him best in the world, who had followed him into darkness and uncertainty without a backward glance. They’d changed history together, and he was as helpless as ever against them. “Fine,” he said. “Let me get my pants.”

**Author's Note:**

> this work was written for the Captain America Big Bang 2019, in collaboration with the wonderful artist [psifiend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psifiend).
> 
> apologies to everyone involved with either of these film franchises. they only sort of deserved this. a huge thank you to [gracelesso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso) and [girlbookwrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlbookwrm/pseuds/girlbookwrm) for beta reading—they are very cool, and endlessly kind, except when i need them not to be. you should check them out.
> 
> questions, comments, and kudos are always appreciated! you can also reach out to me directly using the contact information in my profile.


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